


Same Town, New Story

by LikeSatellites



Category: ATEEZ (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, But during the summer, Eventual Smut, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Good Boy Jongho, Light Angst, M/M, Skater Kang Yeosang, Slow Burn, So not really college, Strength Kink, Trope Subversion/Inversion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-12
Updated: 2019-08-13
Packaged: 2020-06-26 18:26:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 20,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19773883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LikeSatellites/pseuds/LikeSatellites
Summary: “--if you agree to go on a date with me, my friends will let me leave, and I just want to go to the arcade because I have 600,000 tickets, and my friend said he’ll give me his tickets, and I’m so close to winning the lifesize Charmander, and this is tragically important to me, so if you just say yes and give me your number as proof a-and then you let me buy you dinner or something once, I will do almost anything.”“Skate from one side of this straightaway to the other, and I’ll say yes.”It’s the summer after Jongho’s junior year of college. The subway tunnels are slick with a combination of condensated sweat, spilled Starbucks, and mysterious tunnel sludge. He gets dared to ask Yeosang out. Things cascade from there.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: hey atiny, it's me again. back at it again with fun doofus jongho and my yeoho agenda. this is so much more slow burn than I normally attempt, so please...enjoy. comment. kudo. tell me your favorite lines. shout at me. that is all.

It’s the summer after Jongho’s junior year of college. The subway tunnels are slick with a combination of condensated sweat, spilled Starbucks, and mysterious tunnel sludge. San and Wooyoung have their arms linked as they traipse down the beach, seeking a free spot. Jongho is behind them, carrying all three towels, the large folded sheet they use as a beach blanket,a net bag filled with children’s beach toys (They’re for Wooyoung, who claims a trip to the beach cannot be complete without digging “ _ a big ass hole _ .”), as he drags a cooler of beer and sandwiches behind him. 

“Here’s good,” Jongho says, sweat already dripping like ticklish fingers down his temples and sides of his throat. 

“Wanna be closer to the water,” San yells back, over the chatter of children running circles around the lines of umbrellas and the booming cacophony of at least five different bluetooth radios in the vicinity. 

Jongho’s muscles are straining as the cooler wheels catch on a rock ( _ Rock _ away Beach, aptly named), but he yanks it over and eventually gets to stop, drop everything into the sand, and heave a deep, relieved breath.

“One day you will ask me to be your pack mule, and I will refuse,” Jongho says, panting and wiping at his face with the hem of his t-shirt. It comes away soaked. He removes the shirt and hides it in a ball by the cooler.

San and Wooyoung spread out the sheet, holding it down with their sandals and bag of toys. “We thought you relished the fact that we trust you to cart our goods for us,” San says.

“Relished,” Jongho repeats, sighing. “Okay, speaking of relish, I’m getting a hot dog. You guys want any--you know what? No. Nothing for you. Get it yourself.”

Wooyoung gives him the eyes.

San gives him the smirk.

Jongho tries not to look at either of them, but is, as always, powerless.

“You guys made me cart over your sandwiches, and you still need a hotdog?”

Wooyoung nods, still giving him the eyes. 

San nods, still giving him the smirk.

“Fine,” Jongho sighs again, grabbing his wallet. “At least these dogs are only a dollar, unlike when you assholes made me buy you the $7 dogs from Times Square.”

“We were  _ so hungry _ , Jongie,” Wooyoung whines.

Jongho is so hot and so exhausted, and one time Wooyoung literally had to find a ladder in the theater department to help Jongho get down from a tree he had inexplicably, drunkenly, gotten himself stuck in, and San did help hide the fact that Jongho found an injured baby mouse in one of the music recital halls and was illegally housing it in his bathtub for months before he released it back to its family. 

So, yeah, San and Wooyoung are more than just his asshole friends. They’re his asshole family. And “I’ll get your fucking hotdogs.”

Wooyoung flops on top of San on the sheet, grinning and tan and beautiful under the summer sun. San groans under his sweaty weight. 

“Ketchup, please!”

“Ketchup and mustard!”

Jongho weaves through the groups of blankets and umbrellas towards the boardwalk where the familiar hot dog stand run by a wrinkled old man sits by the railing. 

There’s someone else there already, waiting for his dog to burn just right on the griddle. There’s the steam of grilled meat wafting off the metal plates. 

“Three dogs, please. One ketchup, one ketchup and mustard, one ketchup and onions, please,” Jongho says.

The guy in front of him turns around. 

Jongho blinks as the sun halos around the guy’s head, beaming directly into his eyes. The guy shifts, blocking the rays, and Jongho is once again blinded. 

“Holy hell,” he mutters.

“What?” the guy asks, and his voice is lower than Jongho anticipated, considering how angelic and soft he looks. His shirt could be just a multicolored breeze, that’s how thin it is, fluttering around him in the moist beach air.

He has dyed light brown hair in waves, the kind you get when you get so close to the ocean. Salt waves. They hang down in front of his eyes a bit, curls pinched at the ends with sweat or the salt of beach humidity. 

“Sorry, I just…” Jongho says, momentarily without language. “You.”

“I, what?” he seems amused, which is better than terrified, which is how some people look at Jongho when he opens his mouth and makes words come out. 

The guy’s gaze flicks down to Jongho’s bare torso, where he’s deeply bronzed by the last three weeks spent under the sun. Even when he isn’t at the beach with his asshole best friends, he goes running around his neighborhood. He isn’t ripped or anything, just bulky, thick in a way neither of his friends is. Strong in a way guys of his stature aren’t. Usually.

“You...like hotdogs,” Jongho panics.

The guy has two hot dogs wrapped loosely in a napkin. No condiments. Bare dogs? Just going in  _ dry _ ? Jongho shifts uneasily.

“Yeah, I’m just taking a break from skating all morning, so I’m starved.”

Jongho takes his three dogs from the old man, cradling them close to his chest in their greasy napkins, coated in sauces. “Skating?”

“Yeah, at the park down the road,” he says, nodding at the board resting against the boardwalk railing behind the hot dog stand. It’s a nice board. Looks fancy, with stripes of different kinds of polished wood decorating the deck. 

“Oh, are you good?”

The guy takes a large bite of one of his hot dogs, chewing while appraising Jongho thoughtfully. “Why don’t you come see?”

“I--” Jongho is about to agree without a second thought, but then he looks down at his three hotdogs. “Shit, um, these are actually for my friends. We’re down at the beach.”

The guy shrugs, shoving the rest of his first dog into his mouth and chewing messily. There are crumbs of bun on his top lip. Jongho is mesmerized. 

“My friends and I are at the park most weekends in the summer,” the guy says. He smiles, and his teeth are rounded and blunt at the ends like safety scissors.

Is that an invitation? Jongho watches as he grabs his board and steps on, still eating his second hotdog. 

“Cool,” Jongho says, like an idiot. An idiot who still doesn’t even know this guy’s name. 

The guy grins a little and pushes off, skating down the length of the boardwalk back toward the skate park. The wheels roll over the planks of wood with a dull clack that draws attention from the people walking nearby. The guy doesn’t seem to mind, skating with the hotdog still clamped in his mouth.

When Jongho finds his friends’ beach spot, they’re both sitting up scanning for him. 

“What the fuck took so long? That man cranks out dogs lightning speed. He was  _ made _ to crank out hotdogs. Did you get lost?” Wooyoung asks, grabbing his ketchup dog. He grabs San’s and hands it back to him without looking away from Jongho. 

“No, there was a guy--” 

San steps in, eyes flashing. He looks at Wooyoung. Wooyoung looks at San.

Jongho looks at his hot dog. Focuses on the greasy saucy onions soaking into his bun.

“A hot guy?”

“I mean. A guy. Yeah.”

“Hot guy or just a guy?” San presses, and the two of them close in on him and his hot dog.

“He’s a skater. I dunno anything about him. He said his friends come to the skate park down the road on the weekends.”

“A skater?” 

“What? Something weird about skaters?” Jongho feels oddly insulted by Wooyoung’s tone of incredulity.

“Was he our age? Most skaters I know are still in high school.”

“He definitely didn’t look like he was in high school. He asked me to come around sometime.”

San squeals in delight. “Fuck, this is amazing. You haven’t had a crush since that Professor freshman yeah.”

“What? I didn’t have a crush on Professor Hayden.”

Wooyoung and San look sadly back at him. “It’s okay, man. Professor Hayden was hot in a weird sort of...messy...artistic way.”

“How  _ dare _ you? Mark Hayden owned  _ six _ pairs of Carhartt overalls, and only  _ five _ of them were stained with acrylic paint!” Jongho cries defensively. 

Wooyoung pats Jongho on the top of his head. San on his shoulder. “It’s okay, dude. Now you can move on, yeah?”

“Like I said, guys,” Jongho sighs, “he didn’t even give me his name.”

“But you do know  _ where _ he’ll be.”

Wooyoung dramatically slaps a hand over his own mouth, gasping. “Sannie, you absolute genius! I declare a mission!”

Jongho watches as Wooyoung and San chase each other down at the edge of the water, chucking balls of wet sand at one another’s backs, skin dripping and tan and Jongho feels bad for thinking murderously about them, but honestly, the idea of approaching Hot Dog Hottie again makes Jongho wanna eat his own eyeballs at the same time, just really gag himself on them, in their eyeball slime--

“Jongho, we’re  _ leaving _ ,” Wooyoung cries, gesturing at the pile of their beach gear with a frustrated but adorable flourish. “Or are you too exhausted by your own newly budding emotions?”

Jongho narrows his eyes. 

Wooyoung grins.

Jongho waddles behind the two of them, loaded up like a pack mule once again, as Wooyoung feeds San some ice cream on their way to the train. 

Next Saturday, Jongho has almost forgotten about the encounter entirely, when he realizes where he’s currently standing.

“You said this was a shortcut to the arcade,” Jongho whines, as San and Wooyoung shove him past the gate into the skate park. 

“Dude, if you weren’t such a space case,” San laughs, “you’d have noticed us heading in the completely wrong direction. Also, you could see the concrete ramps from five blocks down, man, open your eyes sometimes, yeah?”

Jongho is wearing black mesh athletic shorts and a loose black tank top, dressed like he was going to the arcade with his best bros (which he  _ was _ ), but now he’s standing at the fence at the edge of the skate park. 

“Somewhere in one of these...bowls? Is your new love,” San declares.

“Bowls seems right,” Wooyoung agrees.

“Guys. What do you expect to happen? He’s just gonna skate up here and be like ‘hey, nice to see you again, superhottie?’” Jongho hisses. 

Just then, there’s the crash of wheels on concrete, and then the blur of an angel right in front of them. 

“It’s  _ happening _ \--” Wooyoung gasps. 

And it’s him. 

But then he says, “No board, no entry, sorry.”

Behind him, San snorts softly, and Wooyoung slaps the back of his skull admonishingly. 

“Oh, I,” Jongho wheezes, gripping the bottom of his shirt in his clammy hands. He can feel the beads of sweat trickling down his back like tapped sap. “I don’t know how. I just--”

“Excuse us a minute,” Wooyoung chimes in, giving a big fake polite smile. 

He and San grab him by the arms and tug him over by the grass. “You need to balls up, okay?”

Jongho shifts his hands protectively over his crotch. “Do what with my balls?”

Wooyoung grasps at his shoulders, staring deeply into Jongho’s eyes. “This boy is a 10. He’s so far out of your league that honestly just suggesting he date you should be comical--no offense, buddy, you know I love you cradle to the grave or whatever--but if you don’t go for this, you will regret it.”

Jongho feels  _ seen _ . Wooyoung can do that. 

“This is stupid, guys. Let’s just go ho--”

“Is everything okay?” the guy asks, approaching them slowly, nervously. 

“Now, Jongho. Just do it,” San coaches. 

“Then we can go to the arcade?” Jongho whines.

“Yes. If he accepts, I’ll give you my tickets, too.”

Jongho’s heart swells. His friends mean well. He knows they do. But Jongho is aware of what Wooyoung said. This guy, standing in the path of the early afternoon sun, is so many things that Jongho isn’t. 

So Jongho huffs out a, “ _ Fine _ .” And walks back over. “Sorry, my friends are--”

He glances back, and they’re gesturing excitedly for him to turn back around, and Wooyoung gives him two big thumbs up. 

“So fucking annoying,” Jongho finishes, sighing. “I’m so sorry, but please bear with me a moment.”

The guy doesn’t respond, just waits.

“What would you say if I asked you to go on a date with me?”

“I would say ‘no, but thanks for asking,’” he replies, deadpan. 

“Oh, that’s polite of you, I appreciate that.”

The guy shrugs like he agrees. 

“Now, here’s where I need you to bear with me, okay? My asshole friends dragged me here so I could prove I’m over my last dumb crush on a Professor (I have a weird thing about authority figures) that they still tease me about.” The guy opens his mouth. Jongho cuts in, “Please, don’t respond just yet. Please just...Listen, you’re gorgeous,” he waves a hand at the guy’s face, “and you look really hot on a skateboard or whatever,” the guy laughs cutely behind a palm, “and you owe me  _ nothing _ , but if you agree to go on a date with me, my friends will let me leave, and I just want to go to the arcade because I have 600,000 tickets, and my friend said he’ll give me his tickets, and I’m so close to winning the lifesize Charmander, and this is  _ tragically _ important to me, so if you just say yes and give me your number as proof a-and then you let me buy you dinner or something once, I will do  _ almost anything _ .”

The guy has a weird expression on his face, like he’s uncomfortable but also endeared. Another look Jongho is familiar with. 

“Skate from one side of this straightaway to the other, and I’ll say yes.”

Jongho looks at the guy’s skateboard. 

The guy’s eyes widen in horror, and he kicks his board up into his arms. “No! No one rides my baby but me. Hey, Yunho!” A tall, blue-haired boy skates up. “Let this kid borrow your penny board a sec.”

Yunho shrugs and toes it over to Jongho. Jongho looks down at it. Then at the other end of the park. 

“Deal,” he says. He solidifies his stance (which is probably abysmal, considering how Yunho bellows a laugh), and then pushes off. 

He glides three feet forward before crashing spectacularly, the tip of the board smashing into the concrete, Jongho flying up, tumbling in the air, smacking back onto the ground with belly flop-esque cringeability. 

The board shoots up beneath him and over the fence into the street. A moment later, a city bus passes by and drives a heavy, city-funded wheel over the plastic deck, and there’s a sound like a small explosion as it splits clean in half on the street. A wheel rolls sadly over to the sidewalk where a little kid grabs it excitedly, pockets it, and walks away.

Jongho rolls to his knees, wincing as he thumbs at two big gashes in his knees. Everyone is looking at him. He holds his arms out, declaring, “Ta-da?”

The guy walks over, offering a hand to help him up. “My name’s Yeosang. I like chinese.”

“I’m Korean.”

Yeosang laughs. “The food.”

“Right. I’m Jongho.”

Yeosang holds out a bare palm. 

“Do you want me to...shake?”

Yeosang sighs and pulls a cellphone from his back pocket. Its screen is cracked at the top near the camera. “Your number, Jongho.”

Wooyoung screeches in the near distance. 

“Fuck, right, yeah,” Jongho mumbles, shaky hands reaching for the slim, caseless old iPhone. He types his number in. Then erases it because that’s his mom’s number. Then types in his actual number and panics about what to name himself. He settles for “Jongho 👽” and nervously returns Yeosang his phone. 

“Why an alien?” 

Jongho had thought that was obvious. “I thought that’d be obvious.”

“You’re not super helping your case to get me to agree, but I guess I already gave my word. Text me a time and place, and I’ll see if I can make it.” He sends Jongho a test text to give him his number, and it’s just another alien emoji. Jongho saves him as “Yeosang 😎” because he’s hot or whatever.

“I mean...please make it,” Jongho wheezes, but then realizes, “at...your earliest convenience.”

“Right,” Yeosang says, smiling crookedly like he’s thinking too hard to really smile. “See you then.”

“Yepp.”

They stare at one another a couple seconds more. Jongho bites the inside of his cheek, waiting for the agony to end. 

San sweeps in with the save, grabbing Jongho by the back of the shirt. “We gotta get him cleaned up. Don’t want to get any infections.”

“Not that we think your skatepark is  _ dirty _ or anything,” Wooyoung adds, coiling his arm around Jongho’s elbow. He can feel the blood in drying rivers down from his kneecaps to his ankles. His socks are stained with it. 

“We’re sure it’s spotless, but you know Jongho is  _ very _ prone to infection and--”

“I’ll text you,” Jongho says, helpless as he’s dragged out of the park. When they’re a block from the arcade, he hisses, “Very prone to infection????”

San holds the arcade door open. “C’mon Casablanca, let’s get your Charmander.”

“Casablanca is the movie, Casanova is the hot old dead dude,” Wooyoung corrects.

“I hate you both. But also I love you, keep being you, I’ll always support you,” Jongho says, as he strides over to the token machine. “And now...let’s fuckin’ do this.” 

It’s the next week, and Jongho is standing outside some hipster cafe in Astoria where all the tables are occupied by freelance writers for the NY Times and young attractive multiracial couples. 

San and Wooyoung are with him, obviously, because they needed proof that Jongho followed through on the date with Yeosang. Jongho had tried to privately send the initial date request by hiding in Wooyoung’s parents’ bathroom, but he’d forgotten their bathroom door has a latch to lock it now because the doorknob is broken.

And so Wooyoung had leapt inside after Jongho lingered, sat upon the closed toilet lid, with his fingers over Yeosang’s contact info.

“I  _ knew _ it! C’mon Jongie, you don’t have to hide anything from us,” Wooyoung said, slithering his arm over Jongho’s shoulders and reeling him in like a helpless crab being plucked from one of those tanks at dim sum. “Just ask him to coffee. It’s safe.”

“Safe? You think he could be like...dangerous?”

Wooyoung laughs and slaps Jongho on the back playfully, but it makes him swallow his spit nervously. “No, silly. I mean it’s safe because both of you can have an easy in and easy out. Go in, get coffee, sit and talk, and then if you had a shit time, you can just say  _ ok bye _ and leave. Easy peasy.”

“Easy peasy,” Jongho recites, over and over and over until Wooyoung’s dad ducks into the bathroom to check to make sure he isn’t having one of those post-adolescent existential breakdowns. 

[Jongho 👽]: hey it’s jongho from the skate place 

[Yeosang 😎]: skatepark 

[Yeosang 😎]: did you get your charmander 

[Jongho 👽] rite rite skatepark 

[Jongho 👽]: yeah I did. He’s hanging from a string in my bedroom because my mom found him on the floor and said he was  _ too much clutter _ but she said it in Korean and very bitterly so I knew she meant business and so I hung him up over my bed like a disco ball 

[Yeosang 😎]: great story jongho i’m happy for you

[Jongho 👽]: yeah me too

[Jongho 👽]: wait was that sarcasm

[Yeosang 😎]: not at all

[Jongho 👽]: oh cool cool

[Jongho 👽]: wait was that also sarcasm

[Yeosang 😎]: did you want to ask me out jongho

[Jongho 👽]: do you like coffee?

[Yeosang 😎]: I do. There’s a place near the apartment I’m staying at this summer. I’ll send you the location. 

So, yeah, Jongho is peeking through the glass of this pretentious cafe in Astoria feeling entirely out of his element. If he thinks about it, though, it doesn’t really fit the aura he’d read from Yeosang either. That gives him the little bit of confidence he needs to open the door. 

Yeosang is in the back corner, tucked into one of the booths, thick padded headphones over his ears as his head gently bobs to music. The more Jongho looks at him, the more he realizes how unbelievably beautiful he is. So incredibly soft in the moment he lifts his drink to his lips, misses the straw, pokes himself in the nostril, huffs out a laugh at himself, and then takes a sip for real. 

And then so undeniably sexy in the way he leans back against the booth and runs his fingers through his hair, swiping it away from his forehead, eyes lifting and meeting Jongho’s as he walks over. 

Yeosang slips his headphones off and smiles up at Jongho like this isn’t tremendously awkward. 

“Hey, you made it,” Yeosang says, deep voice like hot boiling caramel. 

“Yeah, sorry I’m a bit late. I didn’t anticipate the amount of time I’d be spending outside the windows, creepily looking inside to convince myself I’m cool enough to come in here,” Jongho admits.

Yeosang, clearly taken aback by Jongho’s honesty, laughs. He removes his headphones from around his neck and puts them into his backpack. Jongho takes that as a good sign. 

“Don’t spend a lot of time in places like this?” Yeosang asks. 

Jongho shakes his head. “I grew up here, so I feel like I’m so stuck in all my old high school habits still, even though I’m in university now.”

“I understand that. The guy I’m staying with, Seonghwa, he grew up here. All his friends are his high school friends, and they eat at all their old spots, and they drink the same shitty booze at parties. It’s funny.”

“For all its massiveness, New York is incredibly insular that way,” Jongho replies.

Yeosang looks at him for a moment, but Jongho can’t tell what he’s thinking at all. 

“Where...where are you from then? You said you were staying at someone else’s place?”

“I’m from LA,” Yeosang says, and Jongho sees it now. In the quiet, calm drawl he has sometimes, the way his clothes are soft blends of pastel and ripped denim. The way he oozes  _ Different _ and makes Jongho’s palms sweat with nerves. 

“That makes sense,” Jongho replies.

Yeosang laughs. “Really? A lot of people don’t believe me because I’m so lame.”

Jongho blinks slowly. “Lame? What about you is lame?”

Yeosang shrugs. “How I have a hard time talking to strangers and how I’m twenty-one but still love skateboarding.”

“Skateboarding is back on the rise, you know. I see people in Zumiez every time I’m at the mall.”

Yeosang laughs again, and Jongho can’t help smiling along. It’s hard not to want to please a creature as beautiful as Yeosang. 

“Jongho, you know, I actually have a favor to ask. Since, you know, you got your Charmander because I agreed to this date,” Yeosang says, drumming his fingers in his bare kneecaps, peeking out of the rips in his skinny light blue jeans. 

“Shoot,” Jongho says casually, despite the little bubbles of panic gurgling up in his esophagus. 

“It’s my friend Mingi’s birthday next weekend, and he really wants to do zombie laser tag, but we’re short a player. I told him I’d organize everything since I can’t really afford to get him a present, and the lady on the phone said we need at least six players.”

“Oh, fuck yeah, I love laser tag,” Jongho replies easily. “You don’t know this about me, but I’m incredibly competitive.”

“This would be the second time we’ve met, so you’re right. I didn’t know that. But I’ll file it away for the future.”

_ For the future _ Jongho’s brain recites.  _ For the future For the futureFor the futureFor the futureFor the futureFor the futureFor the futu-- _

“So I can send you the details, and you’ll come?” Yeosang interrupts. 

“Yeah, for sure. Are these your friends from school? Where are you going anyhow?”

Yeosang’s expression goes blank. He bites the inside of his cheek, hard enough for Jongho to see the way his skin sucks inward. “I’m not actually in school at the moment. I, uh, ran away from home?”

“...A...Across the country?”

Yeosang nods sheepishly. “It’s a complicated story, but I’m staying at Seonghwa’s place. He lives with his boyfriend, Hongjoong, and they’re really cool.”

“How are you…”

“What, supporting myself? I’ve skated in a few local competitions for some prize money, but I’ve also done a few modeling gigs for Hongjoong’s art school.”

“What, New School?”

“Yeah, he’s a fashion student,” Yeosang replies. 

“My friends also go there. The New School.”

“Oh, well, shit,” Yeosang says, with a soft laugh. “I guess that shouldn’t surprise me, considering your one friend was wearing what looked like homemade knock-off Balenciaga flip flops.”

“You knew they were fake? Shit. He really worked his ass off on those,” Jongho huffs, remembering the way Wooyoung had sat on his parent’s living room floor, piecing together bits of rubber and fabric and hot glue, desperate to fit in with his wealthy peers while donning his own version of the overpriced, gaudy Dad Shoe Flip Flop(™). “We passed a group of girls all wearing those hideous white sneakers worth thousands of dollars, and I swear I could feel him plotting all the ways to show them up with fakes.”

Yeosang fiddles with the lid of his drink. “I mean, I only knew because one of my friends pointed it out. He has the real ones, but that’s because his parents are divorced, and his dad feels bad that he left his mom for one of the ladies who gives massages at the airport, so he tries to buy their love.”

“Whoa,” Jongho says simply, unsure if he even heard most of that or was entirely distracted by the way Yeosang’s small mouth fit around the tip of his green plastic straw. “That totally sucks but also is kind of awesome? I’m always conflicted with things like these. My parents still make out in front of me all the time, but we live in a rent-controlled walk-up in East Elmhurst that always kind of smells like mushrooms? But also fire? And weed? But the weed might just be me.”

Yeosang laughs again, and Jongho has always had an addictive personality. Started with video games, then working out, then smoking, then arcade games, then smoking again, and now, apparently, making Yeosang laugh. 

“Did you ever surf? You know, out in California?”

“I went out as a kid, but one of my friends had an older brother who drowned during a local competition, and it felt weird after that.”

“Oof,” Jongho replies, unable to think of a fitting response.

“It’s cool. She moved to the pacific northwest and got totally ripped and teaches kickboxing to middle aged ladies, and she seems really happy. Well, content.”

“Still. That’s scary. The ocean is terrifying,” Jongho admits. “We know more about space than we do about what’s in our own oceans, isn’t that nuts?”

Yeosang leans back against the booth and sucks the last of the coffee from his cup until it gurgles sadly in the straw. “Space scares me more, I think. It’s the combination of heights and The Unknown. Like...falling forever?”

“I think you’d be dead before forever.”

“It’s the loneliness then, maybe,” Yeosang says, quiet. 

“Mm,” Jongho agrees. “That makes sense.”

Yeosang looks up, surprised, maybe. Their gazes meet, and Jongho wonders if maybe he’s still a little high from yesterday, because Yeosang has this weird glow around him, this radiance like maybe he absorbed so much sunlight in California that he carries it with him, in his skin. Like maybe it really soaked into him when he laid out in the sand under a cloudless sky--from all angles, too, like the sand from beneath him and the sun above him. 

Jongho is definitely still a little high. 

“So zombie laser tag?” he offers.

“We’ll probably pregame at my friends’ place before we head over. I honestly am not quite sure why he’s doing this for his birthday, considering he hates being scared, but I guess we’ll be pretty drunk or whatever.”

“Yeah just, uh, text me the deets,” Jongho says, scooting out from the booth, suddenly aware of how long they’ve been sitting (Jongho loitering, since he didn’t buy anything). “Details, I mean. I dunno if they say ‘deets’ out west.”

“I could use my context clues,” Yeosang replies, grinning. “And I’ll text you. Thanks, by the way.”

“Hey, you’re the reason I have a giant lifesize Charmander, so  _ thank you _ .”

Yeosang pulls his headphones up again and nods. “Hope you like Henney green tea.”

“I live in New York, of course I like Henney green tea.”

Yeosang nods and fixes his headphones into place, starting his music back up. Jongho wonders if he’s here a lot, just sipping a single drink and sitting alone. 

When he gets onto the train, he has a message.

[Yeosang 😎]: LIC 8pm next fri. cool? [location pinned]

At home, Jongho stares at the message so long his vision blurs. Eventually his mom comes in to tell him she ordered KFC, and he realizes he’s been zoned out for two hours.

[Jongho 👽]: 💥👈👈

[Yeosang 😎]: did you just send me finger guns

[Jongho 👽]: i’m awkward everywhere

[Yeosang 😎]: see you friday

[Yeosang 😎]: thanks again 

[Jongho 👽]: don’t thank me yet i’m incredibly embarrassing to be around

[Yeosang 😎]: just make it through one more fake date and we’re golden

Jongho, seated at his family dinner table, surrounded by buckets of sweet spicy chicken, wants to keep replying. He stares at his phone, silent on the table beside him, and then again at the chicken. 

“Are you waiting for a call, honey?” his mom asks, concerned. 

“No, uh...no. I’m not waiting for anything,” he says, flipping his phone over and reaching for a crispy chicken thigh. 

“He’s definitely waiting,” Jongho’s father whispers behind a napkin.

“Should I text Sannie to check?” Jongho’s mother whispers back behind another napkin.

Jongho stands, chicken in one hand, phone in the other. “Do  _ not _ text my friends to snoop on me, please! I’m fine! I’m taking my chicken to go!”

Inside his bedroom again, Jongho nibbles sadly on his cold chicken thigh and wishes he’d also stolen a biscuit. He lays back and stares up at the few glow-in-the-dark stars still clinging to his popcorn ceiling, and he wonders if being lonely in space is worse than the immediacy of being eaten by something deep-sea and wicked. He supposes being lonely in space could take much longer. Maybe even forever. Jongho wants to text his friends and ask them, but he also wants to maybe keep it to himself. Jongho only has so many secrets. He lives with his parents. They’ve seen his web browser history, so there isn’t anything they don’t know. His friends have been with him since infancy, and they know about the time he peed himself during the soccer tournament in third grade, which was supposed to stay between him and the coach, but he ended up sobbing on Wooyoung on the bus and telling him anyhow. 

Jongho doesn’t think he has any secrets. He’s never had a reason to. 

But something about today feels like a good day to start. Maybe today he can have something small that he doesn’t share. 

  
  


Yunho and Mingi have a nice apartment. One of those luxury places in Long Island City that used to be a meatpacking factory or Nabisco warehouse or something but now houses wealthy Millennials. They’re on the 2nd floor, but everyone is forced to take the elevator anyhow, so says the doorman. (They have a doorman). 

The apartment itself isn’t very large. Two moderately-sized bedrooms that comfortably fit a double bed and a dresser. The kitchen blends into the living room to the point where it kind of just feels like you’re watching the refrigerator instead of the television, which is just slightly askew from where your eye wants to go as you’re sitting.

Luckily Jongho doesn’t need to look at anything in particular, as he’s already three cups of Hennesy and bottled Green Tea in, and Yeosang is wearing one of those super soft, super thin button-downs that just barely conceals the tanned tint of his skin beneath. The top two buttons are undone, and Jongho tries not to focus on the sharp cut of Yeosang’s collarbones, but, again, he’s three HenneyGreenTeas in, and he has never had very good control of his inhibitions to begin with. 

“So, like, are all your friends super hot Korean exchange kids?” Jongho asks Yeosang, only slurring a little. 

Yeosang laughs, brushing a hand through his hair like he’s embarrassed. “I guess so? I mean, Seonghwa and Hongjoong grew up here. Yunho and Mingi went to high school together back in Seoul, though.”

“I should hang with you guys more, maybe my mom will be less embarrassed of my Korean,” Jongho replies, putting down his cup on the marble island in the kitchen. “She sent me to Korean Church school to learn, but my accent is still so abysmal she doesn’t let me order food in Korean around her.”

Yeosang finishes his drink and easily drops his cup inside Jongho’s on the island. Jongho wants to read into it, but that would be, like, literally insane, right?

“Mine isn’t great either. My neighborhood wasn’t super populated with Koreans. Much more Vietnamese and Spanish. I learned for my grandma, since she never learned English. Would be kind of awkward at Christmas otherwise, you know?”

Jongho nods. He does know that. His grandparents are the same. He remembers his cousin trying to explain her lesbian relationship to them in messy Korean. In the end, they declared, “Oh, you thrifty girls! Sharing one bed in a studio apartment! So smart. So savvy.”

There’s a barrier that can’t be crossed with just shared language, he supposes. Which makes him feel lonely in a different sort of way. 

But, here, surrounded by people speaking in an odd blend of English and Korean, Jongho feels understood. 

“What are you in school for?” Yeosang’s roommate Seonghwa asks Jongho. He’s pretty. Tall. Has one of those jaws that looks like it could clench cinematically in a sexy, aggressive way if he wanted it to. 

“Uh, you know, just business? Like, uh, marketing? I guess?”

Seonghwa laughs. “You aren’t sure?”

Jongho shrugs, looking to Yeosang to see if he’s listening. He is. Jongho doesn’t know what his narrative is supposed to be here. Is he Yeosang’s friend? Is he the stranger he went on one fake date with who Yeosang requested a favor of after? Should he get to know these people, only to never see them again? 

The thought of it makes Jongho’s chest ache. 

“I wanted to become a personal trainer, but my parents never really had any financial stability in their lives, so I kind of want to do this for them. I want to pay them back for the opportunity,” Jongho admits. 

Seonghwa smiles sadly and nods. “That’s fair. Children of immigrants mentality, I think.”

Jongho fidgets with the strings of his hoodie. “It’s cool to be around people who get it. I have friends who think it’s some big tragedy that I’m not pursuing my  _ passion _ or whatever,” he makes finger quotes here, “but maybe my passion  _ is _ that look on my mom’s face when I come home with my bank internship paycheck. Maybe my passion isn’t really about me.”

Seonghwa looks at Jongho for a long moment, just kind of almost-smiling, before he turns to Yeosang. “How did you two meet again?”

Yeosang scratches the back of his neck, and his shirt lifts teasingly over a strip of tan bare hip. “He fucked up Yunho’s new pennyboard at the park.”

Seonghwa’s lips part, and he turns to Jongho, laughing. “You’re the kid who wiped the fuck out  _ hard _ to get Yeosang to go on a date with you!”

Jongho winces, remembering the way his palms and knees stung for days, bits of gravel probably still stuck in them from the way he skidded on the concrete. Maybe they’re in his bloodstream now. Mutating him from the inside. Maybe they’ll make him a superhumanly good skater.

Would Yeosang like to date another skater?

“Yeah, that was him,” Yeosang says, laughing at the memory. “I’ve never seen anything so catastrophic on a straightaway.” 

“What can I say, I really subscribe to the whole ‘go big’ schtick,” Jongho replies.

Yeosang’s eyes travel down his body a moment, and Jongho feels both frozen and like he’s actually caught fire. 

Seonghwa must notice the tension, because he slowly backs away, hands raised. “Hey, if watching someone crash hard and smash a board is Yeosang’s kind of foreplay, that’s chill. I will not kinkshame in this household.”

“Who is kinkshaming?” Mingi shouts over the din of tipsy chatter. “No kinkshaming in this household!”

“Just  _ last night _ you told me my affinity for food play is disgusting,” Yunho cries bitterly. 

“No, I said it was  _ unsanitary _ ,” Mingi defends.

They stare at one another, two massive lanky towers of handsome, and everyone is quiet around them, waiting for something.

Nothing happens, and Seonghwa cuts in with, “We should probably walk over to the place now.”

Hongjoong drapes himself over Seonghwa’s back, and Seonghwa bends down to scoop him up properly, piggy-backing him out the door and to the elevator bay. 

Yeosang hangs back with Jongho, tossing cups into the trash bag hanging on the bathroom doorknob. “Thanks, again, for coming.”

Jongho gives a tipsy half-smile, trying to find a place to focus on Yeosang’s face. His eyes. His nose. His lips--

“It’s chill. I like your friends already. They’re just like my friends but less obnoxious.”

Yeosang laughs softly, shaking his head. “That’s what you think. Just wait until they’re shooting lasers at you.”

Jongho smirks. “I’m looking forward to making up for my catastrophic skateboard failure with my profoundly sophisticated laser tag techniques.”

Yeosang holds the door open for him, looking back through the doorway at him standing alone in a stranger’s apartment, and he tips his head to the side like he’s working something out. “You don’t need to impress anyone, you know.”

Jongho and Yeosang enter the elevator, and Jongho says, “I’m glad you asked me to come, though, and I don’t want to embarrass you in front of your friends.” 

“It’s cool. You’re just doing me a favor,” Yeosang says, facing away. 

Jongho marinades in that thought in the elevator and the entire walk over to the laser tag venue. The favor. Jongho requests a favor. Yeosang requests a favor. In theory, they are even. 

Even in the way that ends. Not even in the way that plateaus, continuing on infinitly.

But, Jongho realizes, that is the other option, isn’t it.

At laser tag, Jongho clips his vest on tight and stands beside Yunho while watching the safety video. No jumping, no crawling, no physical tackling, and, please  _ God _ , don’t run. 

The clip features two grown adults. This game, the safety video declares, is not for children. Nor is it for those who are intoxicated in any way. Jongho glances around at his party, three on each team, all six of them tipsy and smelling of Hennesy. 

The kid manning the room sighs and presses the button to open the doors. “Just please don’t run or break anything.”

Jongho feels bad for him.

For a split second. Before the alarms blare, and they all crowd into the room. Yeosang, Mingi, and Hongjoong on blue team. Jongho, Yunho, and Seonghwa on red. 

Jongho’s code name on his phaser is NAPALM. 

He feels the adrenaline. His already heightened thrill of competition is multiplied exponentially by how many drinks he’s had. Freshman year, Jongho once held a kegstand for over ten minutes because someone told him it was physically impossible. Jongho has punched through watermelons for his accidentally-knife-less family members on picnics. Jongho has no solid reason to need to compete this hard, but Yeosang is already screaming, presumably a zombie actor has found him, and Jongho’s sense of fight or flight triggers HARD FIGHT. FIGHTFIGHTFIGHT. 

He paces through the course, firing rapidly and freezing any zombie actors lumbering in his direction. A single shot each. Jongho doesn’t miss. They all sigh and leave the course, looking almost joyful about being slaughtered by Jongho’s laser.

The red base is completely empty, so Jongho kneels behind a barrier covered in fake blood and fires repeatedly at the disc that absorbs the shots. 

“RED TEAM BASE UNDER ATTACK. BASE UNDER ATTACK RED TEAM,” the overhead robotic voice bellows into the room. 

Jongho catches Hongjoong doubling back to protect the base and fires directly at his vest. Hongjoong freezes in place, vest beeping as he grumbles, “I suck at this.”

And then.

From nowhere. 

Jongho’s vest beeps.

He wheels around to see Yeosang blowing imaginary smoke off the top of his phaser gun. Jongho gasps, a panicked moment from dodgerolling behind a barricade so he can reload and then emerge to kamikaze fire into oblivion, when they all hear the scream.

Jongho doesn’t recognize it, but Hongjoong immediately grimaces. “Fucking Mingi. He always injures himself on his birthday.”

They rush over to where a zombie actress is kneeling beside a prone Mingi on the scuffed carpet. “I’m sorry! I’m so sorry! I popped out at him at the entrance to the tunnel, and he panicked and jumped off the footbridge, and I--!”

“Hey,” Yeosang says, touching her shoulder gently, and his expression is so soft Jongho believes that somewhere a flower is blooming forreal. “It’s okay. He’s a dumbass. Nothing is your fault.”

She sniffles, clearly super worried. 

Mingi groans and sits up, rubbing at his left ankle. “I think I just twisted something, to be honest.”

Yunho smacks the top of his head. “Then why were you laying on the ground like you were dying, you big dummy? This poor girl thought you were seriously injured.”

“Don’t be mean to me,” Mingi whines. “It’s my birthday.”

“Do you think you can walk?” Seonghwa asks, as Hongjoong leaves to go talk to the manager about their party needing to clear out early on account of personal injury. 

Mingi tries to push himself up to standing, but struggles, wincing and gripping at his foot. 

“I’ll carry you,” Jongho says, and everyone whips around at the same time to stare at him. 

“Dude, no offense, but Mingi is absolutely gigantic,” Yunho says.

Mingi whines and tugs at Yunho’s pantleg. “Stop being mean to me! It’s my  _ birthday _ !”

Yunho crouches down, cups Mingi’s face, and plants a big kiss on his lips. “How do you know that wasn’t a compliment?” A pause.

And then. 

And then they make out. With everyone just standing around, watching, confused. 

Or at least Jongho is.

Everyone else seems to find this perfectly ordinary. 

“They do this,” Yeosang says, after a moment of Jongho knitting his brows but refusing to look away.

You wouldn’t look away either. Trust.

“Right,” Jongho says, as the two guys separate, breathless and grinning like they just ran a very cinematic marathon together and then got engaged at the finish line. “My offer still stands.”

Mingi looks at Yunho. Yunho shrugs, physically backing away with his hands in the air. 

“Joong and I can’t carry you, and I’m pretty sure Yeosang would sooner throw you in the Hudson than have to carry you anywhere,” at this, Yeosang nods stoically, “so let the kid try. If he succeeds, maybe Yeosang will give him another date. God only knows the last time Yeosang got to a third date with anyone,” Seonghwa says. “And you know he has that  _ super embarrassing  _ strength kink--”

Yeosang slaps a hand over Seonghwa’s mouth, leaning in to hiss something in Korean that is unintelligible to Jongho but sounds something like maybe  _ kill _ and  _ pieces  _ and  _ never find you _ . 

“It’s cool, guys,” Jongho cuts in, and Yeosang turns around, expression still murderous. “I can bench, like, 210.”

“Pounds???” Yunho cries incredulously, squinting at Jongho’s short frame like he can CAT scan him for the lie.

“What the fuck else would he mean?” Yeosang scoffs, and Yunho pouts. Yeosang sighs and reaches out to pat Yunho’s cheek seemingly comfortingly. 

Jongho does some quick stretches, squatting for a second, pulling his arms behind his back, cracking his knuckles. He stands and steps over to Mingi. “Do you want me to princess carry you or would you find more dignity being piggy-backed?”

“Can you just throw me over your shoulder or something? Like I’m a fallen soldier?” Mingi grouses, shifting into a better position on the floor. 

“It’s your birthday,” Jongho replies, reaching under Mingi to get a grip under his thighs. He makes sure his hold is stable before shifting into a squat and then up to standing, Mingi’s body draped over his shoulder. He’s so long that Jongho has to make a real effort to keep him from tipping like a lanky seesaw. “Comfy? Princess carry would have probably been the most comfortable for you, since your gut would’ve been, you know, not pressed into my shoulder.”

Mingi just groans and goes entirely pliant. 

He turns to find Yeosang staring at him indecipherably. 

“Where should I take him? Does someone wanna call an Uber?” Jongho asks, to break the weird silence. 

Seonghwa coughs into his palm, “ _ Strength kink. _ ”

Yeosang shoves him, and he actually stumbles under the weight of it. The two of them make eye contact. It’s quiet. Tense. But then Seonghwa smirks and Yeosang turns back to Jongho, emotionless.

“You can’t carry him the ten blocks home?” Yeosang asks, and it’s that same face. The face that said _ skate from one side of this straightaway to the other, and I’ll say yes. _

Jongho is helpless to it. He straightens his posture, gripping at Mingi’s thighs to keep him in place. “I was considering his comfort,” Jongho says calmly, internally shouting into a megaphone, “but I can obviously carry him home.”

“His comfort,” Yeosang answers, eyes narrowed, “of course.”

Mingi waves a hand out. “Hello, I’m not unconscious, remember? I’m right here, and I’d really prefer if we call--”

“Shhhhh,” Jongho hisses, squeezing Mingi a little until he stops speaking. “It’s okay, birthday boy. I’ve got you.”

Mingi reaches out for Yunho. Yunho backs away again. “I ain’t entering that minefield of sexual tension,” he says. 

Jongho walks toward the exit, trying his darndest not to glance over at Yeosang to see if he’s still watching. 

He is. 

Jongho feels the sweat at the back of his neck. He feels it at the crease of his elbows. Behind the bend of his knees. They leave the laser tag venue, and it’s sweltering out, Jongho’s skin instantly coated in perspiration. He pants, standing at the crosswalk, and Yeosang is just silently beside him, appraising. 

Jongho tries to make himself the most precious, expensive vase--no, the most majestic,  _ muscular  _ stallion at auction.

Behind him, Hongjoong whispers, “I thought Yeosang said he didn’t want to date anyone until he worked out the shit with his family?”

Jongho doesn’t want to hear, but everyone is still kinda tipsy, and Hongjoong is pretty loud. Yeosang must be ignoring it, so Jongho also pretends to ignore it.

“He doesn’t,” Seonghwa replies, equally as loud. “I’m not sure what this is.”

“Sometimes I can’t tell if Yeosang is aroused or angry,” Hongjoong whispers back. 

Jongho tries desperately to erase that thought from his mind. Desperately. 

Aroused. Or. Angry.

Jongho wants Yeosang to look at him with that challenge hard in his eyes. Eyes that reflect light back at him every time he looks into them. Like they want to push his gaze out. Jongho wants Yeosang to look at him with that challenge in his eyes, and he wants to prove himself. He wants badly to prove himself. 

So badly. He didn’t anticipate how badly he wants it. 

Jongho knows nothing about Yeosang, he reminds himself. Yeosang is just a beautiful boy who let him lie about taking on a date. He’s just a beautiful boy that Jongho doesn’t know at all, and that kind of sucks.

Doesn’t it.

Jongho doesn’t really know Yeosang at all, but this all feels real. It feels known. Here, surrounded by kids he just met for the first time. Kids he doesn’t know but can communicate with in such an easy way. Just like the friends he’s had since he was in diapers. 

Jongho wants to know if Yeosang is like this about board games. He wants to know if Yeosang can cook, or if he likes being cooked for. How does Yeosang take his eggs? He seems like a runny yolk boy. A beautiful runny yolk boy.

Soft boiled.

Jongho’s stomach grumbles.

Yeosang laughs beside him. “Let’s drop him off and eat somewhere.”

Jongho wonders if he means everyone or just him.

Yeosang holds open the door to Yunho and Mingi’s apartment building. “Food? Yes?”

He means Jongho.

Jongho nods, but his head is now blocked by Mingi’s enormous body as he tries to maneuver them through the doorway. 

“Yeah, I’d like that,” he says, once they’re in the elevator, Mingi back on his feet, leaning angstily against Yunho like a miffed princess. 

They deposit Mingi into his bed, and Yunho shuts the door, leaving Seonghwa, Hongjoong, Yeosang and Jongho out in the hallway. They get back into the elevator, and everyone seems much more sober now after sweating all the booze out on the walk, Jongho especially.

“We’re gonna go eat,” Yeosang says, grabbing Jongho by the arm as the elevator doors part and guiding him out onto the street. 

“Okay, bye?” Hongjoong huffs, turning to Seonghwa. “I  _ told _ you they’re dating.”

Seonghwa offers a quiet, confused, “I don’t  _ think _ they are?” in return.

On the sidewalk, Yeosang keeps Jongho moving until they’re five blocks and a couple turns away from the building. He sighs, the kind of sigh that requires effort, more about the sound than the actual relief of breathing out. 

“I’m so fucking sorry,” Yeosang says, leaning back against the brick of some old taco place that only serves out a window with no indoor seating. “I didn’t think they’d be so…”

“I like them,” Jongho cuts in. 

“You...you do? But they said all that shit about dating and kinks or whatever and--”

“They’re cool. I like that everyone is so chill with one another. There’s nothing fake there. It’s nice. My best friends are like that too. They don’t bullshit around.”

Yeosang nods. “Yeah, they sure don’t bullshit around.”

They get tacos. Yeosang gets one with carnitas and one with some kind of marinated spicy tofu. Jongho gets two steak tacos and dumps hot sauce on them both. They sit on the curb, white paper baskets on their laps.

“You sure like spice, huh?”

Jongho nods. “If you can’t tell, I’m kind of intense in general. In all things.”

Yeosang smiles, lips white with sour cream, a scallion hanging on his cupid’s bow. He’s so messy, and Jongho can’t look away. “It’s nice. In California, everyone is so casual and chill and blase about everything. I got here and suddenly everyone is shouting and walking like the apocalypse is behind them--”

“Here in NYC, it very well might be--”

“That’s fair,” Yeosang laughs, licking his lips, and it’s that California casualty, isn’t it? Right there in that easy gesture? “No one really gives me shit for skating her either. Surfing is everything out there, like, you’ve got these gorgeous stretches of endless ocean, so why wouldn’t it be?”

“It’s a different feeling,” Jongho says. “I mean, I’ve never really done both, but it’s ultimately like...surfing is about staying on the board and riding the wave. Skating is like...making the wave yourself. And, you know, like, sometimes you don’t even stay on the board to do it.”

Yeosang is holding his tofu taco to his lips, frozen. Slowly, he puts the taco back down into the box. “That’s...yeah. That’s it.”

“Do you smoke?” Jongho asks, pulling his vape from his back pocket.

“Did you have that the whole time?” Yeosang laughs, reaching for it. “Indica? Sativa just makes me sleepy.”

“Indica,” Jongho replies, watching Yeosang take a pull on the little silver pen vape. He breathes out, the two of them watching the smoke flow out up toward a street light surrounded by moths and mosquitoes. “I prefer a body high to the trapped-in-your-mind high.”

“I agree. I’m already trapped in my head. I’d much rather get outta by body.”

He hands the vape back without wiping the mouthpiece. Jongho takes a pull and shivers. 

“Am I your type?” Yeosang asks.

Jongho breathes out unevenly, caught off guard, and he coughs. “What? What do you mean?”

“When you asked me out the first time. Your friends seemed really keen on getting you to do it. But with me, specifically. Why? Am I your type?” he asks without even looking at Jongho, just watching the moths bash their bodies at the street light. 

“I don’t really have a type. I guess I like the unattainable. Most of my crushes in the last couple years have been Professors or TAs or people in relationships,” Jongho admits, unsure why he’s even answering at all. The weed is 95% thc. He’s a fool.

“I’m unattainable?” Yeosang turns, and his fringe is hanging in his eyes, casting his sharp cheekbones in shadow. 

“In case you haven’t noticed, I’m kind of shaped like a lego brick,” Jongho says, taking another hit against his better judgment. 

“I didn’t notice that at all,” Yeosang replies, taking the vape and pulling smoke deep in and letting it out long and slow. 

“I’m not most peoples’ type, I guess,” Jongho explains.

“That can’t be true,” Yeosang says, and his gaze is a bit unfocused, but maybe that’s actually Jongho’s gaze that’s unfocused. In trying to focus on Yeosang’s level of focus, Jongho’s unfocused.

“Do you like eggs?” Jongho asks.

Yeosang’s brows pull together. He nods. “I do like eggs. Are you about to ask me how I like my eggs in the morning?”

“I am, actually. How did you know?”

“It’s...isn’t that a meme?” Yeosang laughs, and the sound is less restrained, his cheeks softer. 

“Is it? I was just genuinely curious.”

“I think it’s supposed to be a pickup line. Like, uh, like we’ve fucked, and now you’re asking me how I want my eggs?” 

Jongho’s brain catches  _ we’ve fucked _ and slowly implodes. 

He stares off into space. Silent. Lost. Imploded. Maybe a little hard.

“Like we’ve fucked…” Jongho repeats, words salty and warm on his tongue. 

“It’s a meme. Hey, you okay?” Yeosang asks, waving a hand in front of Jongho’s face. 

Jongho startles, rising up to his feet, holding the taco basket in front of his crotch. “God, fuck, yeah I’m fucked. I mean fine. I’m fine. I’m just gonna go home and not fuck. I’m going...I’m going home where I will not be fucking. But I might make some eggs.”

Yeosang is confused, trying to catch up with Jongho’s words. He blinks slowly. 

Jongho feels like a total idiot. Yeosang was just asking him a question. Was just explaining something. He needs to go home. He needs to lay in bed and stare at the glow-in-the-dark stars left on his popcorn ceiling and seek the comfort of dreamless sleep. 

“I’m gonna go home,” he says, ordering himself an Uber, which he definitely would never do in other circumstances, since it’s absurdly overpriced, but he’s desperate for a rapid escape. 

“Are you okay? Is this because I talked about fucking? I didn’t mean...I just meant…” Yeosang mutters, confused, trailing after Jongho to the Uber Pool pickup location down the block and across the street. “You’re fun to talk to. You go on tangents, and you don’t mind that I’m quiet a lot and--”

Jongho watches as the gray Hyundai pulls up in front of him, a girl already in the backseat, apparently sobbing. It’s some kind of sign.

“Your friends think we’re dating. Doesn’t that bother you?” Jongho asks quickly, before he reaches for the door. 

“Why would that bother me? I asked you to come.”

They’re like magnets of the same charge. They keep bouncing off one another, and nothing is really making sense to Jongho. 

“But just to fill the spot. They think we’re  _ dating _ dating. And you’re like…” he trails off, embarrassed as he gestures in Yeosang’s direction. 

“I don’t mind that at all. If they think that,” Yeosang says. “They can...keep thinking that. If you want to keep hanging out. I like your voice. It’s...calm.”

Yeosang is high. Jongho is high. 

He climbs into the backseat, and Yeosang is there at the door. “Do you like Lord of the Rings?”

The driver revs the engine, clearly annoyed. The girl beside Jongho is just sniveling into her purse. Jongho hands her his vape without looking away from Yeosang. She takes it eagerly.

“Of course I do.”

“My friends do a movie night once a year. We watch all the movies and make themed food and drinks and stuff. It’s super nerdy but...you and your friends should come. I’m always the only single person there.”

“But now your friends think we’re dating,” Jongho says.

“Yeah,” Yeosang says. “There will be mead.”

Jongho laughs. “Yeah. Yeah, okay. We’ll be there.”

Yeosang smiles, and Jongho is left breathless with how otherworldly he looks, backlit by golden street lamps, hair frizzing in the thick humidity around his face like a crown. 

Jongho doesn’t know Yeosang or his friends. Not really. But they speak the same language, and Jongho likes them. He likes this feeling. Something warm. Comforting. Familiar. Like sometimes he’s speaking into a void, unsure if anyone is even listening.

But this is like being heard, isn’t it?

Something attainable.

Even if Yeosang isn’t.

Maybe being around him, feeling like this...that’s enough. Surrounded by that familiar feeling, that illusion of eggs in the morning. 

That’s attainable. That’s warm. That’s enough.

The crying girl hands Jongho’s vape back to him, blowing smoke out the window. “Thank you so much,” she says, as they finally drive away, Yeosang behind them on the curb still. She wipes at her eyes and chokes out a laugh after a moment. “God, I’m so fucking stupid.”

Jongho drops his head back against the headrest, flicking his gaze up to the rearview mirror, seeing Yeosang turning to walk to the subway. He’s glowing, even walking away.

“Big mood.”

  
  



	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: wow i finished another WIP!!! thank you for all your kind words of support on part 1, ATINY & friends. i really couldn't do it without you. your comments sustain my soul. truly. i hope i did justice to YeoHo/JongSang with this finale chapter. ily all <3 find me: @likesatellitez on twit

Yeosang is the first one to text after that night. 

[Yeosang 😎]: hey sorry if this is kinda random but do you like art? 

It’s been a little over a week—about nine days. 

[Jongho 👽]: do i like art?

[Yeosang 😎]: do you like to make art and also drink a lot of cheap wine?

[Jongho 👽]: you mean like a Paint Nite thing?

[Yeosang 😎]: yeah. Seonghwa got a groupon for four people and asked me to invite you.

[Jongho 👽]: he asked you to invite me? 

[Yeosang 😎]: it’s cool if you want to say no but i thought it might be fun. 

[Jongho 👽]: like as a date?

[Yeosang 😎]: like last time

[Jongho 👽]: yeah ok when?

[Yeosang 😎]: saturday nite. 8?

[Jongho 👽]: should i wear a beret 

[Yeosang 😎]: do you own a beret

[Jongho 👽]: theoretically 

[Yeosang 😎]: that might be cute

Jongho stares at the screen. He stares hard. He stares so hard his vision starts blurring, eyes watering. He considers texting San or Wooyung to ask whether he’s hallucinating or maybe being actually insane, but he doesn’t. He wants to keep this. He wants to keep this like the fortune cookie fortune kept locked away in an old Rapidash box under his bed. The one that says one day his talents will be recognized. Not even recognized and rewarded. Just recognized. Jongho wants to treasure Yeosang. He wants to put him in his Rapidash box, keep him away from the wear and tear of existence outside of his Rapidash box. 

[Jongho 👽]: send me the address. I’ll be there. 

So, Saturday night, Jongho walks into the second floor studio of a local Queens art gallery. There’s a woman at the front helping people to open their bottles of wine. Seonghwa, Hongjoong, and Yeosang are at a small round table unscrewing the caps of their much cheaper bottles of wine. 

Jongho watches Yeosang take the provided plastic goblets to pour each one. There’s a moment where he hesitates on the fourth glass. Like he isn’t sure Jongho will show. 

“What’re we drinkin’?” Jongho asks, nearing the empty seat, the one beside Yeosang at the small plastic table draped in even more plastic in the form of a red-checkered tablecloth. 

Yeosang looks up at him as he pulls out his chair. He looks up, and Jongho watches the crinkle at the corner of his eyes, the soft lift of the apples of his cheeks, the spread of his lips. He watches Yeosang smile, happy that he’s there. 

Something so pitifully meaningful, isn’t it? How many times has Yeosang been disappointed before, for this to be something worth smiling for?

“Train traffic,” Jongho explains, even though no one asked. 

“Construction on the F is really brutal,” Seonghwa chimes in, after Yeosang has stared wordlessly at Jongho for a full minute. “Right, honey?”

Hongjoong was swirling the cheap white wine in his plastic goblet, sipping it leisurely, luxuriously. He looks at home like that. Like in another lifetime he was once swathed in jewels and exotic furs, sipping something infinitely more priceless than Trader Joe’s wine. 

“Hm? Oh, yeah. Construction. Brutal. What do you think we’re painting? If anyone here is actually good at art, I’m going to be so mad,” Hongjoong says, glancing around the room like he can gauge artistic ability by the way the other guests are dressed. “That girl is wearing a beret. Do you think that means she’s an actual artist or do you think it means she’s compensating for lack of talent?”

“Honey, it’s supposed to be fun,” Seonghwa says, brushing Hongjoong’s bangs away from his eyes. 

“Things are more fun when you’re good at them, though, aren’t they?” Jongho offers. “I despised piano lessons growing up. My hands are small, so it was hard for me. Anyone would pick something they can excel at, rather than waste effort on something they suck at, right?”

“Your hands aren’t small,” Yeosang says. 

“Sure they are, see?” Jongho holds his hand up, palm toward Yeosang. Yeosang presses his palm to Jongho’s. Yeosang’s fingertips are barely taller than Jongho’s. His hands are so slender, so delicate. There’s a bandaid on his pointer finger. Jongho touches it, looking over at Yeosang questioningly. 

“Callous,” Yeosang admits, looking embarrassed and drawing his hand back to his lap. 

Seonghwa clears his throat awkwardly, Hongjoong beside him looking at them through suspiciously hooded eyes. 

Yeosang looks like he wants to say something. Jongho wants to say something, but he has no idea what he wants to say.

Luckily, the woman running the Paint Nite starts explaining the rules before either of them can make another sound. She shows off the sample painting, what there’s should feasibly resemble at the end of the night. It’s simple, just a small silhouette of a bird on a twisting tree branch. The tree is dotted with bright colored flowers against a background of different blues. 

Another woman walks up beside her, holding another canvas. It’s a mirrored version of the bird on the branch, and with the canvases aligned, it looks like the birds are meeting together between the two trees. The two women kiss for a moment and then the leader of the class gets to work explaining the colors to mix up. 

Jongho is frozen. He turns to Yeosang, who looks sheepish. 

“It’s a couples event,” Jongho whispers, leaning closer.

Yeosang nods, wincing a little. “Sorry, I didn’t realize until I’d already invited you, and I figured it wouldn’t be a big deal.” 

Jongho wants it to not be a big deal. “Sure, yeah, it’s chill.”

And it is. For a while. They drink. Seonghwa and Hongjoong bicker. They get a little tipsy. Seonghwa and Hongjoong bicker some more. Jongho gets into the motions, enjoying the way the wine makes him feel like his strokes are purposeful in a way he would doubt otherwise. 

He doesn’t glance away from his canvas, and he and Yeosang barely speak. At one point, Yeosang goes to the bathroom. Jongho focuses on his canvas, on the instructions from the front of the room, prompting him where to give the little swoosh of the prominent branch, where to dab the white to make the background around the bird glow. 

He gets through three glasses of wine, feeling warm, feeling good that he has something to expend his energy on that isn’t crippling self-doubt. 

Two hours go by, and Jongho realizes it’s over. Yeosang touches his arm, and Jongho can feel the plastic of his cheap finger bandaid on his skin. “Hey, we’re showing our paintings now.”

Jongho grabs his off the little stand in front of him. He holds it out to Yeosang. 

“Wait,” Yeosang says.

“What?” Seonghwa asks, getting up. 

Hongjoong trails after him, and they round the table to look at Jongho’s painting. 

“Wait a second,” Hongjoong says.

“Hold it just a second,” Seonghwa adds.

Jongho squeezes the edge of the canvas self-consciously. “What did I do?”

“You’re, like, really good at art?” Seonghwa explains, eyes narrowed in confusion. “Are you...you didn’t know?”

“Please look at my painting beside his,” Hongjoong snorts, grabbing his canvas and moving to stand beside Jongho. They align their canvases side by side. Jongho thinks his looks normal. Like the teacher’s. He looks at Hongjoong’s for comparison.

The colors are nice. Pale yellows and neon yellows blended together to make the little dotted flowers. It’s not until Jongho sees the bird.

The bird, which Jongho recognizes as a bird because he knows it’s meant to be a bird, looks like a small shadowy penis, perched on the branch. 

“How did that even happen?” Seongwha asks through his laughter. 

“I’m honestly not sure. Maybe it was subliminal.”

“You absolutely did this on purpose,” Seonghwa says, pinching at Hongjoong’s cheek. “My little cockslut.”

Yeosang sighs and drops his head into his hands. “Can you guys, like, go anywhere without doing this? It isn’t enough that we live sharing a wall? I have to hear you say the word ‘cockslut’ at a nice artsy evening out with strangers?”

“I’m sure Jongho would call you a ‘cockslut’ if you asked, sweet Yeosangie,” Seonghwa teases.

Jongho isn’t sure he’s still breathing. Something about the conversation has made the world dim at his periphery. He feels like he’s been sucked under, swirling around a bathtub drain with dirty bath water. 

“Guys, he isn--”

“If you asked,” Jongho finds himself wheezing out. 

Everyone turns to him. Seonghwa looks expectant. Hongjoong looks giddy. Yeosang looks lost. 

“I’d call you anything, if you asked,” Jongho finishes. 

Seonghwa smirks, pleased. Hongjoong just coos and claps his hands together proudly. 

“Yeah?” Yeosang asks, quietly, unsure. 

Before Jongho can respond, Seonghwa and Hongjoong are pressing Jongho and Yeosang’s paintings together. 

“Huh,” Hongjoong says, squinting down. 

“Yeosang, you were supposed to paint the bird facing the opposite direction,” Seonghwa sighs. 

Jongho’s bird is facing left. Yeosang’s bird is also facing left. Instead of looking like two birds meeting at the closest point between two branches, it looks like both of their birds are looking leftward, at something off the canvas. 

“Well, it’s still kind of romantic, in its own way. Jongho’s is much cleaner, no offense Yeosangie.”

Yeosang shrugs, okay with not being praised in a way Jongho envies. 

“I like yours,” Jongho says, feeling oddly defensive of Yeosang’s talent. Maybe he’s trying not to think too hard about the fact that their couple painting is now just the union of two left-facing birds who may or may not know one another at all. Regardless, Yeosang’s bird is sweet in its own way. Kind of a little red and pink blob with a sharp beak tipped somewhat upward, like it knows it’s superior. 

“Yeosangie loves pink. He’s a pink princess,” Hongjoong says, patting Yeosang’s head. 

Jongho observes the way Yeosang just smiles softly and leans into the touch. No protest, no friendly awkward shove like San would do if anyone exposed his double bed filled almost entirely with plushies. 

“Pink is a good color,” Jongho says, throat tight at the easy skinship between Yeosang and his friends. 

Wooyoung and San are like that, too. Easy with one another. Jongho is 99% sure his friends are fucking, but even if they aren’t, Jongho knows skinship is just something that comes to them. Easy as breathing.

Inhale. Reach for someone, pull them in.

Exhale. Lean into the warmth of their body.

Jongho envies that trait in his friends. Envies the way they know how to reach for one another when they need that touch. 

Jongho isn’t sure he’s ever followed through on that urge before. He’s never allowed himself something so simple and small. Something that should be so easy. 

“Jongho, you wanna come hang out at our place after this?” Seonghwa asks, glancing between him and Yeosang, like he’s searching for something in the space between their bodies. 

“Oh,” Jongho says, flicking his gaze over to Yeosang. “Is that...would that be cool?”

Yeosang lifts his head away from Hongjoong’s little pets and nods. “We were gonna just chill and maybe order some Chinese.”

“And I...can be there?”

Seonghwa scoffs and throws an arm around Jongho’s neck. “Of course, you weirdo. Has Yeosang not been sneaking you into our place for his dick appointments all this time? We were almost convinced.”

Jongho chokes on his next shocked inhale. 

Yeosang stands, turns to Seonghwa, and utters a quiet, “Say another word, Park Seonghwa, and I will  _ personally _ \--”

Hongjoong cuts in quickly with, “Better stick with white wine—Yeosangie gets a bit feisty when he drinks red.”

Yeosang turns to Hongjoong in that same, slow, calculated way he’d turned to Seonghwa, and something in Jongho  _ stirs _ . Something prideful. Something proud. Something loud and proud.

Something very gay.

Hongjoong doesn’t let Yeosang say a word, though, just aggressively thanks the teacher of the class as he drags Yeosang out the door.

Seonghwa and Hongjoong live in a converted two bedroom, meaning it was once a one bedroom but gentrification happened, so now to account for the obscene pricing, builders somehow marketed it as a two bedroom. Meaning Yeosang sleeps in what must’ve been a walk-in closet or very small study. There’s a mattress on the floor, beneath the only window in the room. He has a moon phases sheet on his bed, like the ones from the children’s section of Target.

“Sorry,” Yeosang says, dropping their paintings onto the floor beside his mattress. Jongho notes that Yeosang’s clothes are all still spilling out of a suitcase. There’s no dresser, no closet. Just a single ripped navy suitcase. “This is kind of embarrassing.”

“What?” Jongho protests halfheartedly, “Your room? Pshhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…” he trails off, unable to parse a reply in time for his pause to be natural.

“Good try, thanks,” Yeosang says, laughing behind his hand. “It’s fine. I just don’t want to let myself get too comfortable.”

Right. California. His parents. This is just a stopover. A place to crash. 

The liminality of everything collapses onto Jongho’s shoulders at once. Yeosang doesn’t belong here, and Jongho shouldn’t keep pretending this is real. For everyone’s sake.

“Do you...want to tell them?” Jongho asks, nervous, butterflies twitching miserably in his gut acids.

“Who? Tell what?”

There’s a wine flush to Yeosang’s cheeks. Jongho smiles, hoping it isn’t too late to say, “Nothing. No one. Should we go out? They might think this is a dick appointment.”

Yeosang laughs, low and sweet, and shoves at Jongho’s back, between his shoulder blades, and Jongho is furious at himself for almost denying Yeosang this joy. Temporary though it may be.

“Oh, thank God,” Hongjoong says, perched on Seonghwa’s lap on the couch, aimlessly flicking through Netflix with a glass of wine. “We were about to call the police, thinking red-wine Yeosang had finally snapped.”

Yeosang plucks a pillow from the nearby armchair and grins as he slaps Hongjoong across the face with it. Hongjoong shrieks, cradling his wine to his chest. Seonghwa just sits there like this is normal.

“Stop! I could’ve dropped my croissant!” Hongjoong whines.

Yeosang giggles and drops the pillow. “You’re a fucking dweeb.”

“I’m sorry, but is my natural running stace the fucking Naruto run?” Hongjoong counters.

Jongho watches the banter, blinking slowly. “You don’t even have a croissant.”

They all turn to him. “It’s...from the vine?”

“The what?”

Jongho isn’t sure if this is a Korean thing or a Woke people thing. 

“Vine. They’re like...really short funny clips? You...you’ve never watched vines?” Seonghwa asks.

“I share a laptop with my parents, so I can’t look at weird shit.”

“It isn’t weird—honey, put on the vine compilation playlist,” Hongjoong declares, kicking at Seonghwa as he reaches for the remote. 

Jongho and Yeosang bring over the bottles of wine, and they sit on floor cushions by the couch. Jongho isn’t sure when to laugh at first, but there’s a vine of a guy pretending to skateboard well while his friend drawls, “oh my god he on xgames—” and Yeosang smacks Jongho’s knee and says, “It’s you.”

He leaves his hand there, resting warmly. 

Yeosang drinks almost an entire bottle of wine, sipping it like water, but he maintains a comfortable tipsiness, unlike Hongjoong and Seonghwa, who are screeching at the vines and climbing all over one another. 

“Don’t mind them,” Yeosang says, as there’s an awkward pause in the noise above them. “Sometimes they just...go at it.”

“No sudden moves, then?” Jongho laughs, wanting to look but knowing he’ll never be the same.

“We’re going to sleep now!” Hongjoong declares loudly, leaping off the couch onto Seonghwa’s back as they run toward their bedroom. 

“And they made fun of you for  _ your _ dick appointments,” Jongho scoffs.

Yeosang snorts, and it’s honestly tragic how cute he is. The way his face scrunches up. The way his eyes crinkle at the corner. The way his nose wrinkles and twitches.

“It’s a joke, I promise you.”

“I wouldn’t hold it against you, it seems like a very grown-up way of handling your relations, you know...having appointments,” Jongho says.

“I don’t do relations,” Yeosang says easily, leaning back on the couch, head tipped onto the cushion. He slants his gaze over to Jongho, and he’s reminded that they drank two bottles of Pinot Grigio. Yeosang is flushed, and there’s something in his eyes that seems more open. 

“Ever?” Jongho asks quietly.

“I’m kind of a novelty,” Yeosang admits, shifting his gaze away to the ceiling. 

“Because you’re beautiful?” Jongho says, unthinking.

Yeosang sits up, looks at Jongho straight in the eyes, the two of them on the floor in front of a neverending compilation of 6-second videos. “Because I’m fucking weird.”

“You’ve never been weird,” Jongho protests, “so I’m calling your bluff there.”

“I’ve always been kind of quiet. Awkward. I like playing League of Legends for hours and I’m always covered in skateboarding bruises and shit. My insides don’t...they don’t match what people see when they look at me,” Yeosang explains, playing with the tears in his jeans, tugging at the threads. “People want that guy.”

“I don’t understand,” Jongho says, because this sounds impossible. Yeosang, the boy who misses his mouth every time he lifts a drink with a straw to his lips? Yeosang, the boy who agreed to a date with a hilariously embarrassing stranger so he could get a fucking children’s toy from a children’s arcade? 

“I think our three dates this last month have been the most sequential dates I’ve ever had,” Yeosang replies. 

So maybe that’s it. Maybe Yeosang asked him tonight because he’s never had anyone ask for a third date. Jongho is glad he could do that for him. Even if it isn’t real, not really real. 

“My friends and I are going to Karaoke next weekend,” Jongho says, and there’s a brief silence as the video ends and switches over to the next in the playlist. “If you. If you’d like to come?”

Yeosang’s lips part, looking pouty in the bluelight cast from the television. He breathes out a soft, “Yeah. I’d like that.”

And Jongho’s lungs constrict. His heart swells, pressing out against all his other organs. Jongho’s blood is rapidly sloshing in his veins. It’s in his fingertips and toes. It’s rushing to his cheeks. He feels hot and frozen all at once, this odd feeling of goosebumps that make him shiver and sweat. 

Yeosang drops a hand to the floor beside Jongho’s hand, and the two of them look at their hands at the same time. 

And Jongho panics.

“If you were a basket of ingredients on  _ Chopped _ , what would you be?” he blurts, and an odd look crosses Yeosang’s face before he laughs. 

“Why? Who’s askin’?”

“Me,” Jongho says, shifting to sit cross-legged on the floor cushion. He wants to face Yeosang. He wants to know him. The liminality is still there, in Jongho’s mind, keeping him constantly aware of its presence. But Jongho has decided not to care. If Yeosang moves on, Jongho will have known him. For this time. He’ll have known him. “See, myself, I’d be IKEA meatballs, those easy to peel clementines that are for elementary school children, squeezable yogurt, and a soft pretzel.”

Yeosang grins, huffing out a soft laugh. “Okay, I see. Well, I’d probably be cup ramen,” Jongho nods, “fried chicken,” Jongho nods again, “green tea mochi, and a shirley temple.”

“Wow, now that’s a basket,” Jongho says, whistling under his breath. “Obviously the trick is to make the mochi and shirley temple into some kind of sauce.”

“What a horrid combination of flavors, though,” Yeosang laughs.

“Disagree. I love maraschino cherries in anything,” Jongho protests.

“Would you rather be in the Marvel cinematic universe or DC?” Yeosang asks, cheek resting on the couch cushion, skin squishing sweetly up into his eye. 

“Marvel for sure. The DC universe is way too grayscale for me. I do not look good in those colors,” Jongho exclaims.

“Bullshit,” Yeosang huffs, pointing at Jongho’s black t-shirt. 

“Are you saying I look good in this shirt?” Jongho teases, plucking at the collar.

Yeosang just nods resolutely.

Jongho splutters, “Yeah, well,  _ you _ look good in  _ that _ shirt aaaaaand I forgot what the question was!”

Yeosang giggles.  _ Giggles _ . This low, warm, bright sound. This kind of otherworldly sound Jongho can’t explain. Something sweet but terrifying in its power. The chirp of two colliding black holes from billions of years ago, finally reaching his ears. 

Jongho is scared shitless at how the sound affects him but can’t imagine unhearing it. He could make it his life’s mission to make Yeosang giggle, and he wouldn’t be upset with himself.

The two of them are drawn back to the proximity of their hands on the floor. In the background, there’s a six second sound byte of a Lana del Ray song. Yeosang looks so soft in the dark, so human. Too human. Too real. 

It’s quiet.

And then, from the back bedroom, there’s a loud crash and a low moan, and Jongho bolts upright to his feet. “I think that’s my cue,” he says.

“We can ignore them,” Yeosang responds, grabbing at the loose fabric at the hem of Jongho’s jeans. “We could go somewhere quiet. With a door?”

For a moment, Jongho wonders if this is a proposition. But Yeosang looks so soft, so beautiful, and Jongho thinks that even if it is, he shouldn’t. It probably isn’t, but just in case it is, Jongho mentally says no. 

He swallows down his urge to give Yeosang everything á la Giving Tree, and he gently shakes his head. “I have work in the morning anyhow,” he explains, and Yeosang’s fingers loosen and fall away from Jongho’s jeans. 

“Oh, okay,” Yeosang says, “yeah, sorry we kept you so late.” 

“It’s fine. I had fun,” Jongho replies, wondering if he should ask for his painting or if it’s just something he should surrender now and not regret keeping later. “I’ll text you about karaoke. Tell Seonghwa and Hongjoong they’re invited. Yunho and Mingi, too, if they wanna come.”

Yeosang smiles. “I have to warn you that Mingi  _ will _ sing ‘Let it go,’ and he will do it with his whole chest.”

“It’s okay San and Wooyoung always do a very gay rendition of ‘The Boy is Mine,’” Jongho says, “and sometimes they force me to pretend to be The Boy as they aggressively diva battle, and it’s a very trying time for me.”

“Good thing I’ll be there,” Yeosang says, “you know, to bear witness.”

“Good thing,” Jongho repeats. 

[Hoho]: i invited yeosang and his friends to karaoke hope that’s ok

[Sannie]: woo, u up?

[Woo]: bet

[Hoho]: arent u guys literally sharing a room rn

[Sannie]: irrelevant. 

[Sannie]: is this date 4???? 

[Woo]: the big zero-four

[Sannie]: im impressed jongho this is big

[Woo]: this is bigger than that time you hooked up with that guy who may or may not have been on that one mtv show

[Sannie]: proud of u, big boy ;3;

[Hoho]: are u guys done bc its late and i need to go reactivate my Just Looking for New Best Friends tinder profile

[Woo]: we are happy 4 u dummy

[Woo]: we know youve been kinda strugglebus in love bc u for sum reason think ur frankenstein or w/e

[Sannie]: u mean frankensteins monster

[Woo]: jongho u cant see this but im shoving my whole fuckin foot in sans face rn bc i hate him

[Woo]: but anyhow were happy for u and want u to know were here if you ever need to like open up or whatever!!!! We love u

[Sannie]: we rly love u ok

[Hoho]: ugh FINE im deleting my Just Looking for New Best Friends tinder profile

[Hoho]: i love you guys too

[Sannie]: [image attached.]

[Hoho]: is that woo’s foot and why is it

[Hoho]: oh

[Hoho]: ...

[Hoho]: u know what i aint gonna pry. Goodnight guys. 

[Sannie]: <3

[Woo]: <3

  
  


The last time Jongho’d been to Gagopa, he’d seen someone snort cocaine off the bathroom sink before punching the next guy who walked in. It isn’t normally that messy, but it is normally messy. 

K-town at night has endless karaoke options, but something about Gagopa really fits his friend group. The classless but super bright and spangly decor. The ban on hard liquor but no bag check so you can sneak liquor in (but is it really sneaking if no one cares?). There’s always a constant barrage of disco lights on your skin at all times.

After introductions, San and Wooyoung showed everyone to their rented karaoke room—one of the larger ones to fit eight people. There’s a long booth on either side of the room, with a small table between them. Mingi and Yunho look a bit silly squeezing into the short booth with their knees up to their chests. 

But then Wooyoung and Yunho pull out bottles of whisky from their bags, and things get interesting.

Interesting in that San and Wooyoung cheers their much-too-large ‘shots’ in plastic cups and then rise up to start their customary duet. Interesting in that Yeosang sits across from Jongho, and he reaches across to tap his cup against Jongho’s with a little smile. 

“Is this your time to shine?” he asks, nodding up to where ‘The Boy is Mine’ is queueing up on the screen. 

“I’m hoping if I don’t make eye contact they’ll forget I’m--”

“Jonghoooooo!” Wooyoung chirps, and Jongho is regretting letting them pregame this. He and San come to wrench Jonho from his spot on the booth, and the R&B battle begins. 

Jongho stands there, chest warm from the second shot he’d snuck in rapidfire, as San and Wooyoung circle him like little vicious gay sharks. He can hear Yunho and Mingi whooping in excitement, and he’d be happy about that--about their groups blending so easily--but Yeosang is looking at him with a little smirk of amusement as he’s tugged from both sides. He looks so sweet, so ethereal with the twinkling confetti of disco lights on his soft cheeks and sharp jaw. 

Wooyoung and San are dance battling now, grinding up on him and humping the air to the beat, and Mingi is shouting, “Fuck it up! Fuck it uuuup!” And Yeosang is just watching Jongho with this careful expression on his face, far too calm for the atmosphere in the room. 

The song ends, and Jongho is sweating. He slouches his jacket off and flings it onto his seat, and there are loud wolf-whistles from the group. San tugs up the bottom of Jongho’s shirt, exposing his stomach and vague shadowy outlines of ab muscles, and San shouts, “Yeosang get your man!” 

Yeosang covers his face and laughs, before reaching for another drink. “If you know he’s my man, why are you touching him?” He shoots the drink and leans back against the leather booth seat, crossing his arms over his chest. 

“Oh fuck,” Wooyoung says, shoving Jongho away from San and pulling Jongho to his chest. “That’s so hot. I am Arwen right now like if you want him, seriously come and claim him.”

Jongho wriggles out from Wooyoung’s grasp and bends to throw him over his shoulder. Wooyoung screeches, and Jongho calmly walks over to the booth to deposit him down at his seat. “Do not forget I could literally toss you right out this window.”

Wooyoung rolls onto his back, grinning up at him. “Why are you getting me all hot and bothered in front of your boyfriend?”

Jongho glances nervously in Yeosang’s direction. Yeosang is staring at Wooyoung with an indiscernible expression on his face. 

In this time, Seonghwa and Hongjoong have taken the mics and begun a very sensual rendition of ‘As Long as You’re Mine’ from  _ Wicked _ , which makes Jongho feel some type of way. They have an ease about their performance, their expressions unguarded in a way that Jongho isn’t sure he’d ever be able to replicate. 

“They’ve been together for a while,” Yeosang says, suddenly in Jongho’s space, pouring the both of them another shot. “Sometimes they go to karaoke just to perform. They’re freaks like that.”

“Yeah that’s some real freak action right there,” Jongho says, observing Hongjoong essentially giving Seonghwa a lap dance or trying to at least, considering the stool up by the karaoke machine has Seonghwa’s lap perched far too high for Hongjoong’s groin to reach. Seonghwa doesn’t seem to care, belting Elphaba’s part with reckless abandon and hooded bedroom eyes. “Should we stop them? I think they have cameras in here.”

“Don’t tell them that. It’ll only spur them on,” Yunho hisses from Jongho’s other side. 

Jongho’s face is hot. Yeosang’s thigh is so close to his. And they’re surprisingly thick thighs, considering how lithe the rest of him is. Jongho tries to erase this thought as quickly as it occurs to him. 

Mingi goes up next. He’s pretty sloshed at this point, having taken a shot for every time Hongjoong had to rise up onto his tiptoes to bring his crotch closer to Seonghwa on the stool. 

He, as Yeosang predicted, begins a very enthusiastic rendition of ‘Let it Go’ from  _ Frozen _ . Yunho stands behind him, shining his phone flashlight occasionally to simulate snowflakes. Jongho wouldn’t call Mingi’s performance  _ good _ so much as almost moving. In his drunken state, Mingi begins crying as he sings the words ‘ And I'll rise like the break of dawn.’ Jongho thinks he understands. If Jongho were a Disney Princess he’d also be an Elsa. 

He must have said this out loud, because Yeosang turns to him, grinning, and he says, “Really? Would’ve pegged you as a Mulan.”

Jongho hears ‘pegged you’ and temporarily loses hearing in his right ear. His brain fizzles out and then back in. 

“Why...would you think that?” Jongho eventually replies. 

“I dunno,” Yeosang shrugs, “you just have her charm. The confidence and the recklessness and the familial loyalty.”

Jongho turns to him, and everything about Yeosang is so bright. It’s neon. Yeosang is hot, hot pink. 

He’s about to search desperately for a response or maybe he’s about to lean in and kiss Yeosang (kiss him like he’s wanted to for a while, kiss him like Jongho only has this one chance, kiss him like his parted lips are begging for--) when Yunho announces, “Jongho, I think you’re up.”

“Huh?” Jongho looks up at the screen. He turns to San and Wooyoung and glares. “You guys set me up.”

They both hold their hands up, feigning innocence. 

Mingi hands Jongho the mic, and everyone is looking at him. Yeosang is looking at him. The instrumentals start up, and Jongho can feel the adrenaline really kicking up. 

Like any challenge, Jongho takes karaoke head on. 

He strides up front, kicks the stool over, and starts singing ‘Hyeya.’ In another lifetime, Jongho thinks he could’ve made an okay idol over in Korea. He’s good at following directions, he knows how to apply bb cream, and he can do a roundoff back handspring, even when completely intoxicated. He supposes they’d probably want to do something about his face and his habit of not being able to eat only one popsicle at a time, but he would probably be okay with that.

It’s the look on their faces.

It’s the way the words  _ please don’t abandon me, don’t abandon me _ in Korean ring out from his diaphragm as he sings, and he hates how much he feels this song right now. He hates how easily he falls into the lyrics and sings them right at Yeosang, who is full-on gaping. Mouth open, jaw slack…gaping.

Jongho keeps singing, everyone except San and Wooyoung looking like Jongho just ripped a barrel of apples in half in front of them with his bare hands.

Which he could also easily do. Just for reference.

Jongho is sweating through his black t-shirt and white jeans. He’s very much regretting allowing Wooyoung to put him in a pair of his white jeans. Jongho finishes the last refrain of  _ Don’t go, Hyeya _ , and then drops the mic. Feedback sparks up, shrill and sharp, but no one reacts. 

Mingi cups his hand around his mouth, leans over to Yeosang, and screams, “Did you know your boyfriend is the Korean Mariah Carey?”

Yunho sighs, tugging Mingi’s head to his chest and gently petting his hair. “Shhh, sweetheart, you’re doing the thing where you talk like everyone is underwater.”

“I love you,” Mingi shouts. 

Yeosang hasn’t reacted, but he’s looking at Jongho like Jongho has always wanted to be looked at. Like he’s something to be admired, desired, wanted. Jongho knows it’s just the effect of his performance. When he sings, people notice him. 

When Jongho was twelve, he entered his school talent show. He sang ‘Boyfriend’ by Justin Bieber, and it was the first time he’d heard applause. It was the first time he heard someone whistle. Someone call his name with something like pride. 

Jongho placed second, with a girl who had trained her dog to play ‘Chopsticks’ on the piano edging out the win. 

But Jongho didn’t forget the low swoop in his belly that accompanied his childhood crush Jungkook coming up to him after, placing his hand on Jongho’s shoulder, and saying “I love Justin Bieber too. You did awesome.”

The most romantic thing Jongho’s twelve-year-old brain could imagine. 

Seonghwa is pushing Yeosang up to standing and yelling, “Give Korean Mariah a kiss, Yeosangie! I think he earned it for that performance.” 

Yeosang stumbles away from the booth, almost tripping into Jongho. Jongho jumps over to steady him, hands finding Yeosang’s hips. They fall into one another, and Jongho can’t remove his hands from Yeosang’s body, not when he’s so warm, slightly damp with sweat, breathing kinda heavy like he’s nervous.

Jongho can feel the way his own pulse is erratically pulsing. He thinks if he doesn’t get kissed immediately, he’s going to throw up, and that will just be the absolute worst. He really doesn’t want to barf on Kang Yeosang, Most Precious Creature on Earth (and Probably Beyond). But his nerves are pounding in his veins. 

Yeosang grips his hands into Jongho’s shirt. There’s whooping behind them, and Jongho wonders if being kissed for show is worth it in the end. If being kissed just once by Yeosang in this lifetime, as an act, is worth what follows knowing how Yeosang’s lips feel.

Jongho is about to laugh it off, when Yeosang cups his face and brings their lips together.

Jongho is stunned, but he knows how to do this part. He knows how to tug Yeosang closer by the waist, feel their bodies pressed together in a long line that  _ burns _ , and part his lips.

Yeosang breathes out a sweet little exhale, and Jongho is devastated. Jongho will never recover. 

His lips are soft and slow and everything tastes like whisky and salt, and Jongho knows with absolute certainty that kissing Yeosang will be worth it. Is worth it. 

Worth it for the way Yeosang grazes his teeth over Jongho’s cupid’s bow, almost chuckling afterward as Jongho gasps into his open mouth. Worth it for the way Yeosang arches into him like they can somehow get closer.

Worth it, despite the fact that when Yeosang pulls back, huffing a laugh, Jongho swears everything inside him shatters all at once. Like something horrific--cosmic. Nuclear fusion. Fission. Whatever.

Yeosang pulls back, laughs a little, and turns to his friends with a thumbs up. “He did good.”

Jongho has never resented praise so much in his entire life. Has never resented it ever, honestly. Not until right now.

Because it tastes wrong now. It tastes like Sweet ‘n Low. It tastes like powdery artificial sugar substitute. It tastes like the cloying wrongness of diet gatorade. 

“You didn’t need to do that,” Jongho says, voice almost hoarse with how desperately he tries to keep from speaking at all. 

“What?” 

“You didn’t need to go that far. It’s embarrassing,” Jongho says, teeth nearly chattering with how badly he aches. 

Yeosang doesn’t understand. Their friends don’t understand either. Wooyoung stands like he wants to diffuse the situation, but Jongho can’t get the taste of Yeosang off his tongue, and it burns. 

“I’m sorry. I just...I thought it would be okay,” Yeosang says, and he sounds so small. 

“It’s embarrassing,” Jongho says again, and he can’t stop saying it. He moves for the door, legs like lead, body heavy and awkward. 

He makes it as far as the emergency staircase before he collapses down into a squat on the concrete and groans into his hands. If he makes himself as small as possible, if he wills away his corporeal form atom by atom, maybe it will be like nothing ever happened. Everyone’s last memory of him will be of the way he sang Jonghyun proud with his whole chest. 

And not the way Yeosang got him to basically whine like a pathetic puppy into his lips, despite the fact that soon he’ll be revealed as a sham, a prank. 

The door bursts open behind him, and Jongho once again wills his atoms into oblivion. 

“Fucking coward,” Seonghwa says, and Jongho falls hard onto his ass on the steps in terror. 

“Seonghwa, I promise it isn’t...it’s just--”

“Just what? You’re embarrassed to be with Yeosang in front of your friends or something?”

“What?” Jongho grabs the railing and pulls himself up to standing. “No...what?”

“Are you just playing with him? Because you’re not the first boy I will eviscerate in his honor, but I will make sure you are the last,” Seonghwa grits out, cornering Jongho on the concrete stairwell landing. “Yeosang isn’t some pretty thing you can just have ready for you when you want and then toss out because you feel like it.”

“Of course he isn’t,” Jongho croaks. “I’m not. We’re not. It’s not real.”

“Not real? I’ve known Yeosang a long time now, and I’ve never seen him do anything half-assed. He’s incapable of lying. He always breaks the lie with a fuckin’ miss-timed laugh or some shit.”

“He didn’t tell...you guys?”

“Tell us what?”

Seonghwa has brought himself terrifyingly close. Their faces are mere inches apart, and Jongho can feel the rage radiating from Seonghwa’s flawless tan skin. 

“He’s not serious. We’re just...just using each other f--”

“You’re  _ using  _ him?”

“No, stop, wait, ok, that wasn’t the right phrasing,” Jongho stammers, holding his hands up in front of his face protectively. “I swear, I would never hurt him. Yeosang is like a fucking corgi in a bowtie.”

“Explain.” Seonghwa narrows his eyes threateningly, like this analogy holds the key to Jongho’s freedom from death.

“Like...I can’t imagine doing anything that would remotely harm him at all. I can barely keep myself from smiling every damn second he’s around, you know? He has teeth like chicklets, like perfect little white chicklets, and when he’s excited, his voice pitches up all high and eager. He’s a corgi in a fucking bowtie! Do you get it? Can you imagine looking at a corgi in a bowtie and like...punching it in the snout? I literally almost vomited saying that, that’s how horrific the idea is to me.”

“Then what did you mean by ‘embarrassing?’”

Jongho’s throat feels tight. He thinks he might be choking. Everything is rushing up and out of him, heavy on his tongue as the words tumble out.

“Because it’s hideously obvious to everyone how desperately I like him,” Jongho whimpers pathetically. “Because Yeosang deserves to kiss someone devastatingly handsome and with their shit together, and I’m just over here trying to get over how I might have a birthmark kink? His birthmark is like...it’s like fresh sweet strawberries! He’s the prettiest strawberry pink boy in the whole world, but also he’s so cool? The first time I saw him, he was in the fucking air, just in the air, flipping his skateboard and somehow landing back in perfect condition. He’s this big...this whole big thing, and I’m just...tragically, painfully crushing on someone so far out of my league I can’t even fathom his league’s distance from me it is so exponentially far away.”

“What are you even talking about? You guys are literally dating. Get over yourself. Yeosang doesn’t fuck around with people. He wouldn’t just string you along like that.”

“Seonghwa,” Yeosang says from the doorway.

Jongho thinks now would be a great time to get abducted by aliens. He looks to the small glass window on the landing near them, but he can only see the neon lights of the stores across the street. 

“I got this,” Seonghwa replies resolutely. 

Yeosang strides over and shoves Seonghwa back out. “No you don’t. Your boyfriend is trying to queue up four Ludacris songs in a row for himself--please go convince him to pick just one before Mingi tries to throttle him.”

Seonghwa sighs and gives a bitter nod. “Fine, but if you aren’t back in five, I’m sending in the dogs.”

“Seonghwa,” Yeosang says again, more sternly. 

Seonghwa backs out and lets the door slam shut behind him.

It’s dark and quiet and cold in the stairwell. The concrete is hard and frigid against his back. 

“I’m sorry,” Yeosang murmurs. “I got kind of caught up in the moment. Your voice is...it’s really amazing, Jongho. And you get this look on your face when you sing. It’s the most confident I’ve ever seen you look, and it’s...it’s really…” 

“It’s okay. Please don’t apologize. I overreacted. It’s just a personal issue, and I shouldn’t have said that shit to you. It’s fine. Our friends think we’re dating, so it would make sense for us to kiss, right?”

“Our friends think?”

Jongho’s breath stutters out like a shaky wheeze. “Wha…?”

“Jongho, this is our fourth date,” Yeosang says, stepping closer.

“But we were just joking, weren’t we? It was--it was fake?”

Yeosang stops. Something passes over his face, and his pupils dilate as he turns away to the window, in the neon lights. “I just thought. I thought maybe it wasn’t?”

Jongho’s hands clench into fists at his side. “Seonghwa said you don’t play with people, but it feels like you’re playing with me right now.”

Yeosang shakes his head and huffs out a frustrated groan. “I’m bad at this. I think we’re both pretty bad at this.”

“At what?”

“At talking about our  _ feelings _ , Jongho. Sometimes you look at me like my skin is made of fucking diamonds, but when I start showing some interest in you back, you assume I’m bullshitting.”

“Well, aren’t you?”

“No,” Yeosang says resolutely. “Jongho, you’re the densest person I’ve ever met, and I’m friends with some pretty fucking dumbass kids.”

“I have a 3.5 GPA, which I think is pretty average-leaning-smart?” Jongho protests weakly.

“You were this adorable little shit who just wanted to get a life-sized plush toy, and you nearly smashed your skull to ask me on a date. And I figured you wouldn’t even show up to that first date, let alone speak to me. I’m used to people asking me out. It’s what you do when you show up that’s so different.”

“What I do,” Jongho repeats. 

“You talk to me,” Yeosang replies, softly, as he fidgets with the low hem of his sweater. “And listen. And you picked my bigass baby Mingi up like it was nothing and carted him home like it was still nothing. And you—I dunno, Jongho. You’re just really goddamn special.”

Jongho has never been punched before, but he’s read enough comics about people getting punched to assume what it would feel like. And he thinks it might feel a little like Yeosang standing in the diffused light of a korean bbq restaurant through the window, or Yeosang looking up so their eyes are level, or Yeosang saying ‘you’re just really goddamn special.’

“What are you trying to say?”

“I’m trying to say that you’re probably the most impressive person I’ve ever met, and also the most infuriating. I’ve been trying to show you I like you. I invited you to my  _ room _ last time we saw each other, Jongho. But you just left, so I figured...but then you kissed me back!”

“Of course I kissed you back!”

“What does  _ that _ mean?”

They’re close now, close enough for Jongho to feel his heart rate kick up. 

“It means that this is our fourth date. If you want it to be.”

“Aren’t you leaving? Your stuff. It’s still in the suitcase. You have no furniture. You’re leaving?”

Yeosang’s gaze softens. “Jongho, I’m not leaving New York. I’m moving out of Seonghwa and Hongjoong’s place. I’m moving into student housing in the city. I’m starting at Baruch in the spring semester, since I didn’t make the fall enrollment deadline.”

“Holy shit.”

Yeosang laughs. “God, Jongho, if we want to date, we really need to work on our communication issues. We both suck terribly at this.”

“You want to date me,” Jongho repeats, dumbstruck.

Yeosang smacks Jongho on the chest. “You’re so fucking annoying, oh my god. Do you not realize how badly I want to kiss you every time you’re around? When you scooped Wooyoung up and just tossed him over your shoulder like a sack of potatoes...I’ve never almost nutted in public, but I was close.”

“Did you just say  _ nutted _ ? Are you actually the Ideal Boy?” Jongho whines.

“I think you might be, Jongho,” Yeosang responds. “I want you to crush me.”

Jongho shivers at the heat in Yeosang’s eyes. He doesn’t think anyone has ever looked at him like this before. He raises a tentative hand. “I have a question.”

Yeosang rolls his eyes. “Put your hand down, please.”

“If this is our fourth date, am I allowed to request something?”

“What would you like to request?” Yeosang asks, clearly humoring him.

When Yeosang and Jongho arrive back at the karaoke room, Hongjoong is rapping Ludacris. He’s sweaty and the top four buttons of his shirt are undone. He’s tonguing sensually at his own lips and groaning out a, “I wanna get you in the back seat windows up/That's the way you like to fuck, clogged up fog alert/Rip the pants and rip the shirt, rough sex make it hurt.”

“This is great timing, actually,” Yeosang announces. 

“Don’t interrupt this, Yeosangie. I think Seonghwa might go feral,” Yunho shouts back, nodding his head at where Seonghwa is watching Hongjoong grind his hips against the air as he raps his filth. And by watching, Jongho means  _ reverently watching with the white hot intensity of a thousand suns _ . 

“Right, I don’t care. They fuck enough. They can wait. This cannot,” Yeosang declares. He steps up to Seonghwa and says loudly, “I’m putting in our official request for my first and hopefully last Dick Appointment at your place.”

“You’re doing what now?”

Yeosang smiles sweetly and brushes Seonghwa’s hair away from his eyes. “Don’t come home for at least three hours. Love you!”

Yeosang turns, grabs Jongho’s wrist, and tugs him back out into the hall.

They laugh their way into the elevator, and then Yeosang is on him. 

Jongho grasps what he can, hoisting Yeosang’s thigh up and around his hip, so he can press in tight against him. He licks slow and sweet past Yeosang’s lips, and when the doors part at the exit, they stumble out into the street laughing again.

Jongho has never liked the people who make out on the subway. There’s nothing hot about the subway. There’s nothing sexy about the largest combination of germs on the planet or the drunk guy who plays the saxophone badly behind them or the rowdy group of intoxicated rich boys in seersucker that are shouting about Libertarianism over the wailing sax. 

But there’s absolutely something sexy about the way Yeosang threads his fingers into the hair at the back of Jongho’s head and  _ tugs _ their lips back together. There’s absolutely nothing sexier than Yeosang pressing his teeth into the curve of Jongho’s jawline, beneath his ear. So if Jongho spends the entire twenty minute train ride trying to get Yeosang to moan a little louder into his mouth, you really can’t blame him.

It’s just a mattress on the floor in a room no larger than Jongho’s parent’s bathroom, but Yeosang makes it seem luxurious somehow, with the way he drapes himself across it, shirtless and panting from kisses.

“Come here,” he whines, and it’s so fucking cute. 

Jongho’s shirt comes off next, and Yeosang whines again. He makes grabby hands. Jongho wants to scream. He wants to nut and scream.

“Are you loud?” Jongho asks, breathless.

Yeosang lifts up onto his elbows. “Why don’t you come find out?”

And there’s that face again. That voice. 

Jongho falls for it instantly. 

He crawls over Yeosang on the mattress and presses him back down, kissing down the smooth column of skin at the side of his throat. Yeosang hooks his legs around Jongho’s hips and ruts up. And, oh, he’s hard. 

And Jongho is certainly hard. 

“You stopped kissing me,” Yeosang complains.

“Give me a minute. I’m trying to get my brain to recognize this moment as reality.” Jongho hovers his weight over Yeosang, and doesn’t miss the way Yeosang’s gaze cuts momentarily to the flex of his forearms. 

“Is there a camera for me to look into?” Yeosang teases, grabbing Jongho by the cheeks and looking him dead in the eyes. “Hi, this is Yeosang. Here to tell Jongho that I’m really serious about trying to fuck right now.”

“Oh,” Jongho wheezes, hips rolling down of their own accord. “You...what do you want? I mean, you want me to…”

Yeosang groans and slowly announciates, “Jongho! Please! Fuck! Me!” 

“Right, right, of course,” Jongho says, fumbling for his belt. Yeosang grabs his hands.

And then Jongho is on his back, Yeosang straddling him. 

“You’re secretly really strong too, aren’t you?” Jongho gasps.

“You’re the first person I’ve met that may be stronger than me,” Yeosang replies. 

“That’s why it’s hot to you,” Jongho gasps again. “It’s all coming together.”

“If Batman and Superman really met, you know they’d totally fuck,” Yeosang says. “Meeting someone who could actually match you...so hot.”

“The more I learn about you, the more I feel blessed.” Jongho’s hands settle on Yeosang’s hips, helping move their bodies together in some semblance of a rhythm. 

Yeosang stops them and yanks Jongho’s belt free. “How can you not understand how hot you are? Has no one told you how hot you are?”

Jongho shakes his head against the sheets and watches Yeosang thumb open his jeans with shaky fingers. There’s a desperation in him that Jongho is only just noticing. He tugs Jongho’s jeans and boxers down in one swift motion, tossing them behind his back. 

Jongho has been naked in front of people before. He’s been naked in sports showers. He’s been naked for girls. He’s been naked for boys. 

But nothing could prepare him for being naked for Yeosang. 

The way Yeosang touches his stomach with gentle fingertips that skim down to the cut of his hip bones and over the little swath of hair trailing from his navel to his cock. 

“I like you so much, Jongho,” Yeosang murmurs.

“Please don’t make me emotional when you’re so close to touching my dick,” Jongho whines. “I might actually cry.”

Yeosang looks at him as he wraps his fingers around Jongho’s cock, firm and tight and  _ perfect _ . “Do you like me too?”

Jongho chokes on a gasp, kicking his hips up to roll his cock through Yeosang’s fist. “I like you more than any creature living or dead.”

Yeosang giggles, and Jongho has to shut his eyes to keep himself in check. He might come embarrassingly quickly if Yeosang giggles again while touching his hard dick.

“Do you want me?” Yeosang asks, and Jongho looks down just in time to see Yeosang lick at the head of his cock. 

“If I say that I want you so badly that I feel like a Rihanna song right now, would that make sense to you?” Jongho pants, still fucking up into Yeosang’s warm skin. It isn’t slick enough to be smooth, but he can’t stop. 

Yeosang nods. “Yes, I appreciate the honesty and creativity of the response. I’m not gonna blow you though.”

Jongho sits up, staring with wide eyes as Yeosang stands to take off his own jeans. “N...No head?” 

Yeosang looks at him. 

Jongho mimes throwing a cellphone at the ground. 

“You’re quoting a vine at me, and I’m about to get naked.”

“So this is your dream date, right?” 

Yeosang giggles and shimmies his briefs down, kicking them aside. He stands there a moment, in the meager light that’s coming through his window at this hour, and Jongho would understand if he woke up right now. 

It doesn’t seem fair for someone to really experience this. It doesn’t seem fair that Yeosang has stood like this before, for someone who didn’t understand. Someone who didn’t appreciate. 

Yeosang’s knees are scabbed over from a skate injury. His waist is so small, but there’s a strength beneath his skin that speaks to the way Yeosang manages to step back onto his skateboard after ripping his skin open every time. 

“Holy shit,” Jongho just says. 

Yeosang covers his face. “Stop.”

Jongho sits up and grabs Yeosang around the backs of his thighs, tripping him back against his body on the mattress. Yeosang collapses with a yelp, and then there’s just skin.

Jongho kisses him desperately. With the desperation of a boy trying to convey to another boy how achingly beautiful he is. How achingly beautiful his everything is. 

Yeosang falls back against his pillows and pulls his knees up to his chest. “C’mon,” he teases, smirk at the corners of his lips. 

“C’mon, what?” Jongho teases back, watching Yeosang pull a bottle of lube and a roll of condoms from under the mattress by his head. Watching as Yeosang teases his slick finger at his entrance. 

“Show me what you got,” Yeosang replies. 

And Jongho is never one to back down from a challenge.

It’s when Jongho has Yeosang held up at the hips, legs wrapped around Jongho’s back, his cock pounding in so hard that Jongho feels sweat drip into his own eye socket but doesn’t stop. It’s then that Yeosang admits defeat. 

And by defeat, Jongho means Yeosang cries out, “Oh jesus,  _ fuck _ , holy shit--”

And Jongho isn’t done yet.

Because Jongho has never come in second place in anything after that first talent show. And he sure as hell won’t come in second place now. 

He pulls out, asks very quickly, “Okay if I kinda maneuver you a little?”

Yeosang nods eagerly, so Jongho grips his thigh and flips Yeosang up over and onto his stomach. He tugs Yeosang closer by the ankles and slides his arm under Yeosang’s belly to hike his hips up and back against his cock. 

“Holy shit,” Yeosang says again. 

Jongho’s stomach is so warm. His blood is scorching hot under his skin. Yeosang arches his back, and Jongho presses his thumbs to the dimples low on his back, reveling in the soft, pleased exhale that Yeosang releases. 

“I want you to fuck me against a wall like in the movies,” Yeosang says, keening as Jongho fucks back into him. 

“That sounds like it would get very exhausting for me,” Jongho replies, hand skimming over the notches in Yeosang’s spine before pushing hard between his shoulder blades, holding him still against the sheets. 

“I’m sure you’d push through,” Yeosang pants, rocking back to meet each thrust. 

“I guess I could.” 

Yeosang scoffs and wriggles in threat, but Jongho keeps him held down with the hand on his back. He whines again. 

It’s cute.

Everything about him is life-ruiningly cute. 

“I’m gonna come,” he cries out against the pillow. His hips are rutting down.

“You want to come or you want me to make you wait?”

“Make me wait next time,” Yeosang gasps, thighs shaking beneath him. 

“Can I get a please?”

There’s a pause where Jongho thinks he may have misread, but then Yeosang giggles and chokes out, “ _ Please _ , dear God, Jongho make me come.”

But then Jongho reconsiders.

Because, you know, he can’t see. 

He pulls out again, and Yeosang makes an almost murderous groan in reply. 

Jongho gets Yeosang onto his back again, his legs thrown over Jongho’s shoulders as he bends him in half and fucks back in. 

Yeosang drags his nails down Jongho’s back and Jongho can feel Yeosang’s cock twitching against his belly. 

“Can you come without me touching you?” 

“Apparently,” Yeosang moans, head tipped back, jaw sharp where it’s cast in shadow. “Oh fuck, oh my fuck--” he breaks off as Jongho’s hips snap in hard, and it’s wet between their bodies now as Yeosang comes with a shaky moan and sharp gasp. 

Jongho presses their lips back together, feeling Yeosang’s panting breaths melt into his own. 

“C’mon,” Yeosang says again, gripping at Jongho’s hair tightly. “C’mon, Jongho.”

And who is Jongho to say no?

His hips stutter as he thrusts back in twice more before collapsing forward and spilling into the condom, feeling Yeosang warm and tight around him. 

They breathe against one another for a few moments. It’s swelteringly hot in here, with no air conditioning and the fan off. Everything is damp. 

“Your sweat is dripping on my face,” Yeosang says eventually, reaching up to rub a droplet away from his cheek. 

“Sorry.” Jongho gently pulls out and ties off the condom. “Trash?”

Yeosang points to a small waste basket beside his dresser. Jongho aims. Tosses it. 

Lands it. 

Obviously.

It makes a highly unpleasant sort of wet slap as it lands inside the basket, but a free throw is a free throw. 

He falls onto his back beside Yeosang, looking up at the bare white ceiling. 

“I love fourth dates,” Jongho says. 

Yeosang laughs and turns onto his side. Jongho mirrors him. 

It’s another moment where everything feels vastly unfair. Yeosang is sweaty, hair curling wetly against his forehead and cheekbones. And he smiles, and his eyes crinkle up and his lips spread, and Jongho could probably just die.

He groans and takes Yeosang’s face in his hands. “I want to bite you,” he declares. “You’re so cute that I want to devour you, body and soul.”

“And they said the Millennials killed romance.”

“Did they really say that?”

Yeosang smirks. “I dunno, probably.”

Jongho presses in, and doesn’t think he’ll ever tire of kissing Yeosang. 

The door opens. 

There’s a tentative, “Hey, I know we were supposed to give three hours but we got kicked out of Gagopa for indecent bathroom blowjob exposure!”

Yeosang huffs. “Thank fuck I’m moving out.”

“And you’ll be in…?”

Yeosang grins. “A single.”

Jongho wishes there were peeling neon ceiling stars above him right now, so he could thank them for the miracle that is his life. 

“I really don’t know whose idea it was to come here,” Yunho says, taking a sip of his beer. 

“It was obviously Yeosang’s,” Wooyoung replies, nodding over at where Yeosang is leaning against the wall, gaze heavy where it lands on Jongho in the axe-throwing lane. “Can’t you just smell the arousal emanating from him every time Jongho gets a bullseye?”

“I was trying to ignore it,” Yunho replies, as Jongho pulls the axe behind his back and bends at the waist to launch it at the target. 

It thumps hard into the wood, burying itself blade-first into the center.

San and Wooyoung golf clap for him. Mingi leaps up with a whoop since Jongho is on his team. Yunho groans. 

Seonghwa adds the 10 to the scoreboard. “It’s alarming to me how he hasn’t missed a single time.”

“I guess we can rely on him in the event of a zombie apocalypse?” Hongjoong responds. 

Jongho turns and beams at them. 

Yeosang climbs over the barricade separating the group from the axe-throwing lane and he grabs Jongho by the collar. “The 365th date is the best,” he says, pressing their lips together. 

Most people are sick of it now. There’s no excited whooping anymore. 

Well, except from the voice in Jongho’s head that whoops any time Yeosang is near him. 

“I find it terribly odd that you enjoy losing,” Jongho admits.

“I’m just very aroused watching you win.”

“We can all hear you,” San calls out. 

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh my god, please at least leave the lane so someone else can throw,” San gripes. 

Jongho flips San the bird behind Yeosang’s back as he kisses him again. 

“Dating isn’t a competition, you know,” Mingi asserts.

Yeosang breaks the kiss to crane his neck and shout, “Sounds like the attitude of someone who’s losing.”

Mingi turns, alarmed, to Yunho. “Are we losing at dating?”

Jongho thanks all the peeling ceiling stars in the universe for letting him have this moment and all the moments like it. The moments when Yeosang looks at him, and Jongho thinks it should be unfair to be so blessed. They have to fuck in a twin bed in college dorm housing, and they don’t really have the money to go on dates that aren’t free walks along the highline or Pay What You Want day at the Museum of Natural History. They spend time more often than not just kind of high and watching vine compilations, laughing against one another’s lips between videos. 

“I love you, bitch,” Jongho sings. 

“I ain’t never gonna stop lovin’ you,” Yeosang sings back. 

“Biiiitch,” they sing in unison. 

“I’m actually disgusted,” Wooyoung announces, standing up to leave. 

“Sore losers,” Yeosang says, watching as their friends all vacate. 

“We are pretty disgusting, actually,” Jongho replies. 

“Do you think you could throw two axes at once and get bullseye on both?” Yeosang asks, pulling back with that Look. 

“Is this a double penetration metaphor or do you actually want me to do that?” Yeosang just rolls his eyes, so Jongho follows up with, “I mean, yeah, but we’re gonna have to book it right after so they don’t see our faces and ban us for life.”

Yeosang giggles. Jongho reaches for two axes. 

What’s he gonna do, say no?


End file.
